Six Degrees of Burning Man

Bru-ché · Post by **Bru-ché** » Tue Sep 09, 2003 11:35 am

I have created a website (my Burning Man art installation). It's a six degrees of Burning Man website designed to show how closely knit the Burning Man community really is.

Currently you can see how people are linked (artists/founders or contributers) to Theme Camps, Art Installations, Art Cars, Performance Groups, and Volunteers not to mention the links to all your fellow burners. Complete with photos, descriptions, and testimonials.

If you would be interested in helping me out with my little project, please register at http://www.sixdegreeburn.com/register.cfm
If you like it, invite your friends, maybe they will too.

The more people that register, the more exciting and useful the site will be.

Thanks
B)
http://www.sixdegreeburn.com

jamison · Post by **jamison** » Tue Sep 09, 2003 6:17 pm

Quite impressive,

I'm curious about how you plan to incorporate this into an art installation? I also hope people won't go crazy about linking to each other and only link themselves to people they actually know (be it from the playa, the internet or the normal world)

Looking forward to seeing how it will grow.

Bru-ché · Post by **Bru-ché** » Tue Sep 09, 2003 8:22 pm

It won't necessarily be "incorporated into an art installation". I'm not really much of an artist, but I can code, so this is my contribution.

I did however have some useful gifts to hand out this year at the event; I printed up some address labels with the site address and affixed them to 500 "cigarette" lighters.

Everyone who received one was so happy. I'd say more than half said something like "I've been looking for one of these" or "I lost mine".

Oh they're collector's items now

BTW: This is absolutly a non-profit thing, I'm paying for the hosting and doing all the coding myself (with a little help from my resource network).

B)

P.S. Nice design on that website Jamison, any pointers for my site?

jamison · Post by **jamison** » Tue Sep 09, 2003 9:23 pm

Hi Bru-ché,

Thanks for the compliment. I hope you meant it about the advice. I actually make my living doing user interface design for web applications, so you said that to just the right guy.

I hope you don't mind me posting my comments here, I'll keep it brief and you can e-mail me if you'd like to know more. I think it's important that people know that design decisions aren't arbitrary, there's a lot of thought behind them.

With that said, I think you've done a great job, and as it is I'd only suggestion two real changes at the moment, and these are pretty small.

1) On the "Invite" page, I think you should show a sample of the e-mail that is going to be sent. When I did it, I wondered to myself "I wonder what the e-mail they'll get looks like? Will it tell them I sent it? Is it going to do something to connect them to me? or do they have to sign up then find me themselves? And if they don't know I sent them the e-mail, then how are they going to know to look for me?" You always want a user to know exactly what the result of their action is going to be.

If you had a sample on the page under the form that went something like "The following e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address you entered above:" followed by the text of the e-mail, then you get rid of that confusion: "pressing submit will send this e-mail to the
addresses I just listed.

2) I can't find any kind of mission statement or about page for the site. Burners who visit from the lighters, this site, or the invite e-mail will probably have a good context of what the site is, because they were told "go here to..." but for people who stumble across it, as a link or something else will not have that context of what the site does, so you need to be able to fill in on what it is.

On the internet people get to sites all kinds of ways, so it's important that pretty much any page on a site can stand on it's own as the first page a user will ever see of your site. On some sites it's pretty obvious, on others it isn't, especially sites that require you to log in or set up before you can properly use it, like this one. A prominent "about" link would solve that.

Having worked on a couple web portals, I can see couple scalability issues: what about different BRC locations over multiple years? What if people have more then one playa name from different years? And then the whole issue of scalability, searching for people, etc...

I hope I haven't bored everyone to death.

Bru-ché · Post by **Bru-ché** » Wed Sep 10, 2003 10:58 am

Great input. Thanks.

I will add the 'About' Link that is important.
I'll also add the sample email.

For the most part, I wanted to get the basic functionality in place first. I started working on this like 3 weeks before I left for BM03. Now I can go back and take care of extra stuff.

I have a huge list of things that need to be added, many of which you've mentioned.

I'd like to be able to host photos on the site. I have a friend that will be helping me with that, I guess php has some image functions built in.

Searching will be very useful. I also want everything in the profile to be clickable For instance you will be able to click on a year and see all of the burners that attended that year; you will be able to click on a state (e.g. 'CA'), and see all of burners from that state.

Lots to do. I have to tell you seeing more burners sign up every day gives me lots of motivation to make the site better for them. I feel obligated.

Thanks again for the input,

B)
http://www.sixdegreeburn.com/

jamison · Post by **jamison** » Wed Sep 10, 2003 12:51 pm

Right on man,

Those were the only two issues I could see with the site as it is now, and they're pretty minor considering everything. Even more so when you consider you put it together in three weeks.

Yes, PHP has image functions, but they are not part of the core PHP functions, and your hosting service may not have included them (mine doesn't, but they do provide you a way to install them yourself), but they are available. And those are to be able to manipulate images (measure, resize, etc...), just basic uploading shouldn't require that.

If you ever want any feedback, or someone to bounce ideas off of, just give me a shout, and I'd be happy to give you comments.

crackle · Post by **crackle** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 4:11 pm

How fun. I already found a friend on it. We are part of the SoLoCo Village. She is in Solocollective, and I am with The Spot.

Thanks

BleuOrange · Post by **BleuOrange** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 8:43 pm

Nice project you have going Bru-ché! I'm excited to see it evolve. Have you considered adding a village aspect to the project or do you think that it would be better left out of the mix?

~Tiger

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 8:35 am

Six Degrees of Burning Man ......no WONDER the theme this year is "The Fault of Kevin".....

everaftertrance · Post by **everaftertrance** » Sun Apr 04, 2004 12:39 pm

I joined up, I look forward to meeting people

Going to invite a few others too...

I remember there used to be a site back when called www.sixdegrees.com but they shut it down I think for privacy purposes or something. I could be wrong. Great idea!

Thanks for promoting it.

Rage · Post by **Rage** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 10:24 pm

If anyone wants anything like printed lighters or other printed promotional items, let me know. I get this stuff at great prices and if you let me know you are a 'burner' when you call I'll go to a low base price as a courtesy.

RTG Advertising & Production
631-772-2020

P.S. t-shirts 48 pc min, promotionals are usually a 250 pc min

angrykittie25 · Post by **angrykittie25** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 10:40 pm

Isn't this considered commerce in a no-commerce community?

Zephryus · Post by **Zephryus** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 12:07 am

I`m going to second that. Not only are you advertising for commercial services, Mic Rage, but you`re doing it in a totally nonapplicable thread. Bad form.

Rage · Post by **Rage** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 1:35 am

I was under the understanding that non-commercial applied to the event not the community.

I'm sorry...just hated to see some guy putting stickers on lighters...cheesy. Read up a few.

No harm was meant.

Money still needs to change hands in order to make the event happen even if we do the share mentality within.

Zephryus · Post by **Zephryus** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 5:28 am

Hey, no worries. You might want to read the Terms of Service, though. (Link at bottom of page)

Oh, and for anyone who signed up to SixDegreeBurn awhile back: I started an ePlaya group under "Volunteers". Add yourself to the list if you're so inclined.