Creative Cities and the growth of the Burning Man Project

This week I was in NYC with my colleagues Meghan Rutigliano and Iris Yee. As you can see by the pictures below, we had nothing short of a fabulous time. This casual trip marked the first time that I have ever traveled and collaborated with the Regionals team where they were categorically apart of The Burning Man project (from an internal operations stand point). Megs and Iris conducted a series of Interviews to select the new NYC Burning Man Regional contacts, and I was there to listen, learn and speak to what the project hopes to accomplish. 

This is a really exciting transition for us. I believe that community building is best facilitated through listening to the desires and the needs of the key stakeholder groups, linked to a big idea. This week we got to cross-pollinate our hopes with those of the new NYC BM leadership. 

Key take aways included: 

NYC needs a place for all it’s tribes, camps, arts collectives and active groups to come together. The burner run event Gratitude offers a great space for this, but still is a somewhat curated event although it has no branded content or sponsorship. NYC has so much content and activity that everything flavoured ‘burner’ ranges from sponsored events to giant fundraisers, it often makes it hard to tell what is what. I think it would be great if there was a platform for all those groups to come together, collaborate and create a larger impact together. 

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Hopefully with clear messaging and good strong leadership we are getting a few steps closer to this vision. 

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This Trip to NYC also marked mine and Peter Hirshberg’s first time on a panel together. As participants of the inaugural DLD NYC conference, we were both asked ( at the last minute) to be on a creative cities panel.

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You can find the video on the DLD site, I’m not going to post it here :) 

Yossi Vardi ( featured below) one of the early investors in ICQ and father of the DLD community hosts many events year round. Next up for me is Tel Aviv’s regional Burning Man event  Mid Burn festival coupled with one of Yossi’s events in the city. 

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Although chaotic, it was a lot of fun. 

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Last but not least, I spent all the time IN-BETWEEN with my dear friend Dr Gino Yu (featured in the middle) Gino is dedicated to ‘waking people up’ and helping them to realize that the past is just a story controlled by the mind. There will be MUCH more to come on this in the Near future. Gino and I have a special plan to create an event at Davos next year that I can’t wait to share. Oh yeah… and we went to the Robot Heart party.