The current issue of Business 2.0 (July 2007) features an article by Chris Taylor about Burning Man as a business enterprise: “Burning Man Grows Up”
America’s biggest counterculture jamboree is also a $10 million business. Now it’s trying to leverage its brand — and save the planet by — by (gasp!) inviting corporate participants.
The article, which features a great photo of Larry Harvey and Marian Goodell with Burning Man in a business suit looming large in the background, talks about how for the first time in its history, Burning Man will allow “green friendly” companies to exhibit their products (in general, Burning Man does not allow any kind of commercial influence or commerce). I think this might shake up the beehive a bit.
The article also includes a photo of my old buddy Chicken John and his “Cafe Racer” Wood Gas Pickup Truck.
Thanks to M2 for the tip!
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so is burning man dead again? i guess so. formerly an experience, now it’s an expo! long live the greened business tax write-off that is burning man!!!
I think I’m going to cry…to hear him write about us as a business asset is demeaning. To hear us described as a choice demographic is disgusting. Chris Taylor is right, the door is now wide open…”the money always wins.”
I hear the concerns people have mentioned here, and can understand them, but think what’s happening is that a business magazine has filtered Burning Man’s intentions through their perspective. And I also think the writer was hoping to stir up exactly this kind of controversy–how better to sell magazines?
The truth, however, is different. There will be no marketing or branding of any kind at Burning Man. The Green Man Pavilion is a place where ideas will be exchanged. In Larry Harvey’s words: “Our environmental exposition will allow you to learn things that you can take back and put to use in your life and your community, continuing the flow of gifts; from artists and innovators to you, from you to the world” Please take the time to read the invitation to participants from Larry Harvey, then look at what happens on the playa, then decide whether or not the event is “dead.” In the same way we all take the time to explain to new participants that no, it’s not about naked ravers, it looks like we also have to take the same patience to explain “non-commodification” to business reporters.
Here’s the link to the invitation: http://www.burningman.com/environment/pavilion_invitation.html
I read the article again, carefully, and I think I know why something in me loved what it was hearing the first time, while fearing what it was reading…
The guy who wrote it is a 7 time burner, but he got the ticket prices completely wrong in the article (i.e. $250 in January and $400 at the door… whereas it’s $198 in January and $280 at the door). This clues the aware into possibly a double message article… (i.e. one message for real Burners who at least know the ticket prices, or know Larry Harvey (have read / heard what he has to say / his vision / how he talks) and can understand the subtle puns and jokes, and another for Yuppie, faux-burner Business 2.0 types… or the masses that go there or are thinking of going there for a “vacation”… for 1 week out of the year before returning to the “nasty world” (that they help create). Since I am a tweener… i.e. have a little bit of both in me, I can see both messages very clearly:
As I read it again, the article is full of “subtle” clues… I mean in the first paragraph we hear the “Maid Marion” had a lot of jobs among them “Department of Defense contract work”… You mean the BM “CEO” was a Defense Contractor??? (Even if true, I assure you, it’s BM comedy.) Later on we meet a corporate advertiser, a Mr. Cheney — who exists btw –. only to learn that he is looking for “good publicity.” (funny no?)
Then you have all the mock business prose… that, read carefully with the right ear, is pure comedy:
– “Branding’s important, ” Goodell says… Ha Ha Ha… BM is a no LOGO culture… i.e. Branding is important NOT TO DO.
– “This community is a dream for anyone looking at demographics,” Goodell says. “We have kids who work in coffee shops and we have billionaires.” — Again, that is an absolute NIGHTMARE for marketers… wtf do you “sell” to such a diverse group? Marketing is all about “targetting” a specific demographic…
– BM is a “$10MM operation… [with profits] comfortably above $50,000 since 2005″ That’s a whopping 0.5% profit! If you were serious you’d say BM is a $10MM operation BARELY breaking even…
— But, “It’s a good business,” says one venture capitalist who has examined the company’s financial record” WHAT?? Makes no sense. It’s not a good business by business standards at all..
So, maybe It IS a good business by other standards… So what type of “business” is it good at? Again, cluing the “hearing ear” to a second massage.
Larry Harvey comes to the rescue with this gem of a “double” entendre:
– “Disneyland this ain’t: “Theirs is a spectacle entirely for consumption; ours is based on interaction and communal effort. It’s Disneyland turned inside out.”
– well, is it? I think over the years it’s become more and more “spectator” place… and that is part of the problem.
So, basically it is clear that to many people (old timers), Burning Man has become too big to cultivate what it’s real “business mission” is : interaction and community…. So: The message is… we’ve gone corporate, we’re “burning the man”… Now, all the old-timers / true burners can break out and create smaller “regional burns.” They won’t do that as long as “Larry Harry” (or “The Man” behind the Man) exists… But, the “business plan” doesn’t need Larry Harvey,” we hear in the last paragraph of the article. What does that mean??? Well… YOU can be your own Larry Harvey. In fact, the aricle ends with a small declaration, as if it just wants to set you free: “Larry Harvey Does Not Exist”!!! Now you can go on and do your own thing. They also say… as long as the LLC (company) exists, Burning Man — the centralized and now corporatized entity — will exist… but, if enough Burners get fed up and decide to do regionals that are more “true to the origins” of BM… the central LLC will go bankrupt “perhaps for one last time.” What does that mean? BM doesn’t need money… it is always “almost bankrupt” that way… People fuel it… at the regional level that can happen again… until those grow too big and need to be “burned” and fractured again. In this way, I think it is the hope of the founders to have a scalable (as in fractal) “business model” to spread BM and have it take over, all over, all the time. Going from 1 place, for 1 week (time) out of the year… to many places, many times out of the year.
Bascially, as they state literally, but somewhat opaquely in the article: they are FEARLESSLY destroying Burning Man to HOPEFULLY “Save the Planet” (i.e. free people all over the place create regional burning mans that will then expand and help their local communities get the BM spirit.
Or as the last paragraph elequently sums up: “And what of Burning Man itself? Harvey sees the event continuing for another decade or so, at which point spinoffs – the so-called regional burns – can take over. By then, he says, there’ll no longer be a need for a single, central Burning Man organization. But Goodell demurs. “The business model can totally function without Larry Harvey,” she says. “As long as the LLC exists, the event exists.” As if to underscore her point, the enigmatic sign above the door to her conference room reads, “Larry Harvey does not exist.”
This is a brilliant and risky move that completes a statement started 10 years ago when BM formed an LLC (or went corporate). It also jives beautifully with last year’s theme… Last year we had to deal with “The Future : Fear and Hope” (two poles). This year we have to deal with the same thing… The Green Man : Green or Green (as in Greed).
It’s up to us…
much love!
Farhad.
For Tom Price to say that “business magazine has filtered Burning Man’s intentions through their perspective” is a lot like the pot calling the kettle black.
In addition to being Burning Man’s Environmental Manager, Price is also a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Mother Jones, and National Geographic Adventure, among others.
Yuppies in motorhomes and a science fair-lol Bury the man it’s dead!
Cult! Cult! Cult! There I said it! Oh yeah Mainstream Cult! I feel better now!
The military should set up a recruiting station there. Alot of wingnut misfits and liberals with nothing better to do than squat in the desert and hum mantras to their pagan gods.
Green technologies are about at least trying to protect our environment. I see no real problem allowing Ideas about this on the playa. The journalist clearly framed the article in direct opposition to burining man ideals on purpose. Don’t get so bent out of shape. Although the yuppies in rented RV’s are a little bit of a bummer.