Regional Update from Yonderman

[yonderman]

Greetings Kiwiburners
Its been a long time since I wrote to you all, and its been for a variety of reasons. I have delayed in doing so until I got myself back up to speed with kiwiburn happenings after some busy times away from the regionals seat, but also wanted to wait till I had something significant to say.

The long delay in emailing you is due to various reasons: my work taking a big ramp up (including lots of overseas travel), more time being spent with family than ever before, other hobbies (band) becoming more demanding than before, and generally enjoying "time out". Some of you will have known that I have been reviewing my role in kiwiburn and burningman, and soliciting a good amount of feedback in this process. Its been a necessary time for me to process all the variables that determine where I am at and where I am going as the NZ regional rep. I have had thoughts that have "tooed and frooed" on various themes, and in all honesty have been quite unsettled about it all. The speed at which kiwiburn has been growing and continuing along its MEGAMORPHOSIS path and my inability to keep up with that dizzy-fast process on a day to day basis has bothered me, and the frequent feeling that kiwiburn is forgetting me/doesnt need me, and that I should quit as NZ regional have been on my mind. These thoughts are then countered by feelings that I did my bit and nothing I do now could compare with what I did in the past - that I have earned a rightful place to still be a member of kiwiburn "exec" but in a more laid back role as the founder/regional/historian of the event. Well, I have finally given myself proper quality think time and talk time (with other regionals and some of you) to process it all and move forward decisively. Bottom line is that I *don't need* to worry about not being at the front line of whats going on with the present event organisation. My contribution and success is to have created an event that has now left the nest and is rapidly becoming a hugely well known event. My day to day contributions are also in miscellaneous regional duties (I on average connect one-to-two people per week to the kiwiburner community via the nz-announce list and website, and generally answer lots of email), and in providing that overall long term perspective to kiwiburn and to the BMORG - where we have come from, what we are doing now, and where we are headed (I dont get used by the other organisers much in this capacity, but I nevertheless offer my contributions, and at times voice them anyway). Our 2009 theme is Future History, so it couldn't be a better time for me to have stepped back and regrouped. Talking with other regionals helped me quite a lot, particularly in being satisfied with my efforts in providing the base for which kiwiburn is now, knowing that I still have a unique role in the event and community, and also finding comfort in knowing that other regionals have gone through the same thing at their half decade points of regional community development. I also heard that kiwiburn really is regarded as one of the shining lights of the regionals network, and has stimulated a lot of other regional communities to get the arses into gear. Cool eh! Lets all take a bow!

One thing you will see in the website in the coming months will be a history of kiwiburn. Its important for me to write this record of where kiwiburn has come from and where I think its going. I also have other writing responsibilities as the regional (for the BMORG), but the history one is the one I really want to tell you about. Kiwiburners may or may not be interested in where kiwiburn has come from, but the record will be there, at least for posterity.

If you have anything that you would like the BMORG to know about, then please use me. I am your contact between kiwiburn land and that head office in San Francisco. I know most of the key people there so can be totally matter of fact with them..... For instance, whats your feedback on the relevance the BMORG has to our operations; Do we need them now ? Will we need them in the future? What could they do for us that would make them more relevant to us? Should they take more of an active interest in our growing event and community? Why don't they pay for overseas regionals to attend the summit, given that they place so much importance on the international growth of burningman (I will be again missing the summit since I don't have funding to go there)? Why has my co regional applicant (kiwi) been waiting over a year for a phone interview at the BMORG? I'd like to hear your feedback on whatever you like about our community. I need to compile a regional report (acronym is ARRR, for Annual Regional Recap Report) on kiwiburn, so any feedback you have would be most welcome. It has the deadline of end of the year. An excellent opportunity to have a say, good and bad.

By the way, thanks to all of you who turned up at Jane's and my camp at Burningman this year for the annual kiwiburner gathering. We had probably about 40 kiwiburners turn up in total. Makes a big difference to get the word out via the What-Where-When. We had a great time drinking cheap beer and cheap red wine while amazing all the non-kiwi campers with the 40 rich accents.

Hope you all have a great Xmas. I certainly know of a few burner gatherings happening. I will be preparing the history/archive in the coming months for you to see on the website....that is when I can afford the spare time in between building my art structure...history in the making....future history

Bye, and see you at Kiwiburn if not before!

Yonderman
NZ regional burningman contact

[kiwi]

thanks mark
you rock buddy

[yonderman]

Hi Kiwiburners - have raced out a ARRR report for the BMORG (see below) and sent it off before racing away to the wilderness for a few days. The ARRR reports will be consulted during the annual regional summit at the BMORG office in Feb 2008 so its important for us to get these words sent over there. We don't get to have kiwiburn represented there as the BMORG don't fund overseas tickets for summit attendance, and kiwiburn sure can't afford it.

Note that I have included the full afterburn report for 2008 in the actual ARRR report, but left it out of this thread to save space. The afterburn report saved a great deal of time in preparing this ARRR report, and I thank all I worked with to put it together in 2008.

Sorry I have not been able to solicit your feedback on this ARRR report due to tight time constraints. I only got asked to provide a report a few weeks ago, and am about to go to wilderness until after the new year.

Happy New Year!!
Yonderman


Kiwiburn New Zealand
Annual Regional Recap Report 2008

Mark Stirling aka Yonderman
New Zealand Regional Contact and Kiwiburn Founder

December 2008

1. Kiwiburn 2008 Precis
The Kiwiburn community has now had its 6th year of existence, and 5th year of Kiwiburn events. The last year has been another one of great growth for us. Our community grew, both in terms of participation at our 2008 “Combust in Unity” event, community critical mass in the Wellington and Auckland areas, and online activity on www.kiwiburn.com. We saw our first anniversary as an incorporated society, got our financials into good enough shape to be able to initiate the funding of small arts grants, and grew our committee to utilise talented Kiwiburners and accommodate the increasing workload. Wendy aka Dr Windy stepped down as Big Nob after the 2007 event, and Bruce Scanlon took on the role. A successful working bee weekend was held on the Kiwiburn site late in the year, in preparation for the early February 2009 “Future History” event. Throughout the year Kiwiburners got together and continued to build our community in many parts of the country and world. The Kiwiburner party at Burningman this year was the most well attended yet, with between 30 and 40 present at my camp. We frequently welcomed international burners to “Kiwiburnland” year round, and next year will see several of us attending the “Nowhere” European event. My role in Kiwiburn has now become non-critical for the actual organisation and running of Kiwiburn events, allowing me the time to write a history document on the development of the event and community, to provide liaison between Kiwiburn and the Burningman Organisation (BMORG), and to generally provide guidance and long-term perspective.

Our 2008 Kiwiburn Afterburn report describes most of what is required for this Annual Regional Recap Report (ARRR). The Afterburn report follows this section (also submitted to the BMORG earlier in the year). Additional important points needing to be raised with the BMORG follow in the last section of the report.

2. Kiwiburn 2008 Afterburn Report (Written April 30, 2008)

(INCLUDED IN FULL IN ARRR REPORT - REFER TO EARLY 2008 THREADS ON THIS WEBSITE TO SEE AFTERBURN REPORT)

3. Important Points Needing BMORG Attention
• Kiwiburn has become very self sufficient, and my BMORG-Kiwiburn liaison role generally has a light workload as a result. Comments have therefore been made by many kiwiburners regarding how the BMORG actually serves us, aside from maintaining the obvious identification as a Burningman affiliated event with all the associated Burningman principles. Some consider that Kiwiburn could easily become independent in the future, so it is worthwhile to alert the BMORG as to the above developments.
• Kiwiburn has never been represented at the Regionals Summit due to lack of available funding for international regionals to travel to the Summit. The only exception is where a few more financially able international regionals have paid for their own travel. It is a detriment to both Kiwiburn and the BMORG that Kiwiburn cannot be represented at the Summit, and our feeling is that BMORG funds should support travel “once in a blue moon” for Kiwiburn representation. The same would go for other international regional communities. The alternative is for the Summit to be held at, or close to the timing of Burningman so that international regionals can kill two birds with one airline ticket.
• The interview process for prospective regional contacts appears to be extremely inefficient from a Kiwiburn perspective. It has now been over a year since our very own Chris Hankins aka Kiwi applied for co-regional status at the BMORG. At the time he was 50-something in line for an interview. Repeat inquiries to the BMORG over the year resulted in the same reply (“ there is a long list of interviewees ahead of him, and we will get to him as soon as possible”). In the mean time, Kiwi has unfortunately lost interest in the co-regional position, which is a great loss to me as regional. In light of this development I request that his application be withdrawn.
• All in all we are doing really well with Kiwiburn, and this years event will be a big one in our development. If the BMORG has interest in sending someone down to share in this exciting stage of Kiwiburn community growth then we will most certainly welcome them.

[yonderman]

Hiya - got back from vacation in South Island on Sunday, but while away I managed to prepare the ARR report for the BMORG (sorry Burningman Office - have found out they don't like to be called that as its impersonal/monster sounding..but for brevity I will use BMORG just as intended - abbreviation). The ARR report is pasted below. Was a bit of a rush job, but thanks to discussions with some of you and the afterburn report it was a relatively quick job. If it seems brief that is because it had to be less than 3 pages. My understanding is that the ARR reports will be distributed to the regionals who attend the Summit in late Feb.

You will notice I made some comments at the end about things we have a "beef" about with the BMORG. Stephen Raspa has already responded on these to me directly. I have found Stephen to be the most level-headed, responsive and supportive of our efforts in the BMORG over the years. Here are his answers (paraphrased):
-Raspaman is nothing but sorry and red faced re the one year delay of getting Kiwi interviewed for co regional, and is going to do some questioning to see what went wrong.
-Raspaman has taken my idea on board about "once in a blue moon" sponsorship of a foreign regional to attend the summit. He says that BMORG funds are too stretched this year to provide such funding, but next year might be a different story. Regardless he will be pushing hard for this to happen next year, so we may yet be able to have physical presence at the Summit, cf having them display our stuff.
-Our feeling that we occasionally get re not seeing the BMORG as all that relevant to our activities is a common one amongst regional communities. He didn't offer much in the way of advice here, but more expressed that it was a common thing to feel that way, but that at the end of the day it was often advantageous to maintain the BMORG association eg for applying for funding and attracting greater international involvement etc. I guess I agree, for now at least.

On the regional display end of things - I will bring more posters along of regional stuff to display at Centre Camp. Can't guarantee it will be any more of a rush job than last year, but I will bring stuff regardless.

Yonderman
(worried as his art structure is still a big pile of bamboo...that would explain why he hasn't approached Jodi for funds yet)


*************************************************************
Kiwiburn New Zealand
Annual Regional Recap Report 2008

Mark Stirling aka Yonderman
New Zealand Regional Contact and Kiwiburn Founder

December 2008

1. Kiwiburn 2008 Precis
The Kiwiburn community has now had its 6th year of existence, and 5th year of Kiwiburn events. The last year has been another one of great growth for us. Our community grew, both in terms of participation at our 2008 "Combust in Unity" event, community critical mass in the Wellington and Auckland areas, and online activity on www.kiwiburn.com. We saw our first anniversary as an incorporated society, got our financials into good enough shape to be able to initiate the funding of small arts grants, and grew our committee to utilise talented Kiwiburners and accommodate the increasing workload. Wendy aka Dr Windy stepped down as Big Nob after the 2007 event, and Bruce Scanlon took on the role. A successful working bee weekend was held on the Kiwiburn site late in the year, in preparation for the early February 2009 "Future History" event. Throughout the year Kiwiburners got together and continued to build our community in many parts of the country and world. The Kiwiburner party at Burningman this year was the most well attended yet, with between 30 and 40 present at my camp. We frequently welcomed international burners to "Kiwiburnland" year round, and next year will see several of us attending the "Nowhere" European event. A documentary on the history of Kiwiburn has been largely completed. My role in Kiwiburn has now become non-critical for the actual organisation and running of Kiwiburn events, allowing me the time to write a history document on the development of the event and community, to provide liaison between Kiwiburn and the Burningman Organisation, and to generally provide guidance and long-term perspective.

Our 2008 Kiwiburn Afterburn report describes most of what is required for this Annual Regional Recap Report (ARRR). Excerpts from the Afterburn report follows this section, and the original can be found on www.kiwiburn.com. Additional important points needing to be raised with the Burningman Organisation follow in the last section of the report.

2. Excerpts From Kiwiburn 2008 Afterburn Report (Original written April 30, 2008)


Organisation by Kathy "KuriousKat" Guidi
In August of 2007, Kiwiburn became an incorporated society and now has the professional sounding name of Kiwiburn Incorporated. Our incorporation document governs how the organisation is structured and this document can be found on the Kiwiburn website. Becoming an official entity affords us further credibility as we grow Kiwiburn and interface with official bodies in the real world; it also means we have an official bank account and must file annual financials with the IRD!

We have three official officer roles: The Chair (Big Nob), The Treasurer (Bean Counter), and Secretary (Committee Wrangler). These three officers serve on the larger Organising Committee (ExCom) whose purpose is to act as stewards for Kiwiburn Inc., providing oversight and guidance on business matters required to run the festival.

In brief, your ExCom consisted of:
Wendy "Dr. Windy" Allison (Chairperson, or Big Nob), Polly "Mistress Polly" Lind (Committee Wrangler), Jodi "Rivet" York (Bean Counter), Mark "Yonderman" Stirling (New Zealand Regional Contact, and elder), Allyn "Chewtoy" York (talented committee member), Chris "Kiwi" Hankins (festival on-site manager, MPW overseer, and man builder), Bruce Scanlon (talented committee member and temple builder), Cass "Wildilocks" Edwards (Website manager), Sam Hankins (talented committee member), Shelley Watson (Marketing manager), Kyla Dryesen (Community Outreach Liaison), Kathy "KuriousKat" Guidi (talented committee member), and Jonathan "Helix" Beza (talented committee member)

In addition to serving on the committee all year long, attending regular meetings, and trying to keep the organisation on track, many on the committee bring big art and theme camps to Kiwiburn with great effort of year-long planning and execution. This year, most of the ExCom felt over-taxed at Kiwiburn with managing their dual roles of responsible committee member versus creative partying anarchist artist which made for a somewhat stressful experience for some. Addressing burnout is something that the committee will be taking a much needed closer look at this year!

Financials by Jodi York and Kathy "KuriousKat" Guidi
We had another good financial year with 182 participants attending the event. Tickets were sold in the $50 and $60 range with the majority of tickets purchased using Paypal or direct deposit. We changed retail outlets this year and went with Cosmic Corner who sold 23 tickets on our behalf. And once again, we received a significant grant from Destination Taupo (TDC) – thank you!

On the expense side of things, we invested more money into the main art structures for Kiwiburn: the Man, the Temple and the greeters station. These three projects accounted for a little more than 30% of our budget. We also decided this year, after discussion on the forums, to account for our carbon emissions by making a donation to a local nature reserve; $2.60 of each ticket was donated to The Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust, for a total of $473. All other expenses were within the forecasted budget.

3. Important Points Needing Burningman Organisation Attention
· Kiwiburn has become very self sufficient, and my Burningman Organisation-Kiwiburn liaison role generally has a light workload as a result. Comments have therefore been made by many kiwiburners regarding how the Burningman Organisation actually serves us, aside from maintaining the obvious identification as a Burningman affiliated event with all the associated Burningman principles. Some consider that Kiwiburn could easily become independent in the future, so it is worthwhile to alert the Burningman Organisation as to the above developments.
· Kiwiburn has never been represented at the Regionals Summit due to lack of available funding for international regionals to travel to the Summit. The only exception is where a few more financially able international regionals have paid for their own travel. It is a detriment to both Kiwiburn and the Burningman Organisation that Kiwiburn cannot be represented at the Summit, and our feeling is that Burningman Organisation funds should support travel "once in a blue moon" for Kiwiburn representation. The same would go for other international regional communities. The alternative is for the Summit to be held at, or close to the timing of Burningman so that international regionals can kill two birds with one airline ticket.
· The interview process for prospective regional contacts appears to be extremely inefficient from a Kiwiburn perspective. It has now been over a year since our very own Chris Hankins aka Kiwi applied for co-regional status at the Burningman Organisation. At the time he was 50-something in line for an interview. Repeat inquiries to the Burningman Organisation over the year resulted in the same reply (" there is a long list of interviewees ahead of him, and we will get to him as soon as possible"). In the mean time, Kiwi has unfortunately lost interest in the co-regional position, which is a great loss to me as regional. In light of this development I request that his application be withdrawn.
· All in all we are doing really well with Kiwiburn, and this years event will be a big one in our development. If the Burningman Organisation has interest in sending someone down to share in this exciting stage of Kiwiburn community growth then we will most certainly welcome them.

[Hana]

[kiwi]

good question hana....

let me answer this...

whilst we are all part of the collective there are times when we are disconnected and we may feel uncollected....

there will be, in my mind a time when the summit will bill held in different places and or countries at different times of the year...not unlike the G8
shell we email george w now and give him a heads up!?

so yea without a full represntation then it's just another excuse for a party at HQ....not realy but you get my drift.....

lobbying works well in america

[yonderman]

Good points - in reality the summit does not serve the international regional communities well as the international regional communities cannot attend the summit!! I just wrote the ARR report as requested by the BMORG, but I see it as doing nothing useful for us except for the bit where I get to have a gripe about the summit not sponsoring international regionals to attend (and gripe about Kiwi not getting his interview after a year of waiting). They cannot expect us to come up with funds to pay for our attendance, and the result is that it remains an American focussed thing. Its probably useful for the american regionals, but not us.

[Hana]

Ahh i see. I guess its important to be able to send them official reports so they know what we are up to and how everything is going rather than just through word of mouth. AND also you could not really expect the Borg to pay for the flight of every single regional representative from all over the world to attend every year, it's not really an effective use of money aye?

So did Kiwi get an interview yet?

Thanks for the replys guys.

[yonderman]

Greetings Kiwiburners!

Two words….WE ROCKED!!!

If you are like me you will be smiling from ear to ear at the success of Kiwiburn 2009, the sixth Kiwiburn in our short but fabulous history. Kiwiburn went off in the best way possible. Numbers were up about 50 % to around 250, and theme camps and art structures must’ve been up by over 200% !! The weather was perfect, the lake was up (no sluggish shallow water this time round), and the man burn went off *without* a bang! There was virtually no trouble to speak of. Just stuff like some of the local gang trainees having to be watched in the wee small hours. In stark contrast to my usual partying nights at Kiwiburn I was able to walk around stone cold sober on burn night as the official MUDFOP (Mug Under Duress – Finger On Pulse –basically the sole responsible person for everything) and take in the success of the festival with a crystal clear perspective. It was very apparent to me how far Kiwiburn had come in six years as I walked around MUDFOPing that night.

What were the highlights from my perspective? The scale of the event, the fact that more people had contributed in bigger ways than ever before, and the fact that our community has become very cohesive - a lot of us are friends who mean a lot to each other! There was the fantastic help we received from volunteers, allowing the committee to find a good balance between responsibility and having a good time. There was the diversity and spectacle of events such as the Fashion Parade, Drumming and Hoola hooping workshops, Jelly Wrestling and the Living Library, There was the participation from the local community who now treat us as a long-term fixture in the region they are proud of. There were the people who put the effort into the theme camps that always provide so much to Kiwiburn, such as the Green Fairy and Skull Fuck. There was the supreme leadership skills and hard yards put into the event by the committee and their helpers. As I write this I imagine that Kiwi and his band of merry men and women might have only just left the site. Skilful hard workers and always there to help at all times.

I could go into a list of people I need to thank, but one always runs the risk of missing someone in such circumstances. So I will just say thankyou to EVERYONE. Participants from NZ and overseas, local community, Committee, those who couldn’t make it but wanted to, Firefighters, medics, Destination Taupo… You all ROCK!! Thank you for making this Kiwiburn dream a reality. For you Wellingtonians, see you tonight at Fidels!! For the rest of you, see you on the Forums. And please, if you want to add your email address to my newzealand-announce email list for announcements from the Burningman office and other topics, then please flick me an email to newzealand@burningman.com and I will do so – with pleasure! Please also keep in touch through the Forums. Lots will be happening on there from now on as we enthuse about Kiwiburn, grow and cement the community, and also learn from our mistakes. We want to hear from you and have you with us!!

Bye for now.
Yonderman. Xx

[bruce]

[yonderman]

Greetings Kiwiburners

Hope you are all doing great. I thought I would get a pre Easter message out to you as there have been a few things happening that you should be aware of. As you know I am not one to inundate your in-boxes with every communication that goes on in Regional space, but there are times when a bunch of things build up. I won’t repeat all the major things being mentioned in our committee meeting notes and elsewhere on the kiwiburn forum. My email will instead be largely focussed on regional stuff - namely international burner collaboration. J

Most important thing is that the Australian burners are mobilizing! After a long silence I have now had a bunch of comms in the space of two weeks from the Australians!! See the emails below (the latest). Robin aka A Human (Australian regional) and Sherpa have been working hard to make a “curtain raiser” Australian burn happen. They are going to make it happen in coastal central NSW in early June, and are very keen to see Kiwiburner involvement. Several of our committee members have indicated a willingness to attend. See Robin’s email below in particular to get onto the various websites. Robin was initially in touch with Dr Windy (immediate past Big Nob) a little bit last year, but now they are really working to achieve critical mass. Please get in touch directly with them, but communicate your ideas on the forum and here if you want to be part of the kiwiburner contingent at the first Ozzburn. This will be the start of something big and we can have a formative role! Imagine being part of BOTH kiwiburn genesis (yes kiwiburn is still in genesis!) and Ozzburn genesis!! Wow.

Other things of significance…The Burningman office held the third annual regional leadership summit in late Feb. By all accounts it was a successful event with about half of the regionals in attendance (but only about one international). One of the big things discussed was that the burningman office wanted to make the burningman regional network less reliant on them as a central hub. They realise that they have been the bottleneck for many things. From what I gather they didn’t get very far with the “how do we do it” but I guess the main thing is that they are acknowledging the problem. Indeed the problem has thwarted us here in NZ, with Kiwi waiting over a year for an interview, and eventually deciding to pursue other initiatives (kiwiburn MPW, Burningman DPW). Well…in the last few days Meghan from the BM office has contacted me to schedule an interview! With Bex (regional coordinator) moving aside to assume a more part time role, it might be that more things are able to happen as a result of her heavy work load being spread over more people. Here is an exerpt from Meghan's email to show you how the process works, and also to show that your feedback is essential. A very democratic process in other words....



************************************************************************************************

We currently have one candidate for the New Zealand co-RC role: Chris
Hankins aka Kiwi. Do you have any feelings about Kiwi as a co-RC that
you would like to share with us?

Our process dictates that we put an open call-out for Co-Regional
Contact candidates on the New Zealand list. We will leave the call open
for two weeks. Once we give NZ burners those two weeks to throw their
names in the hat, we will then begin interviewing candidates and
generate a confidential feedback survey about the candidates to put out
to the community. You are encouraged to fill out a survey so that we can
get your input on all of the candidates.

The Regional Selection Committee will then meet to choose the new co-RC
or two RCs if it seems that having three of you would be a good idea.

************************************************************************************
With the above in mind, please encourage people to join up to the newzealand-announce list who are not already on the list. They can contact me on newzealand@burningman.com

More summit stuff of interest - Kiwiburn received rave reviews at the Summit from people who had been there. Andie Grace aka Actiongrl sent me a note to say congrats on the huge success of kiwiburn. I don't know if we will ever see Andie of any others over at kiwiburn, but at least they know that we are on fire!!

Kiwiburn will have a presence at Nowhere.this year, with “ex pat” kiwis attending, and some travelling there from kiwiburnland. Maybe one or two will even go to Afrikaburns….

On other fronts, Kiwiburn is healthy and active. Frequent Friday nights happen at Fidels, the committee had a good positive post burn meeting recently (like I say check out the forums for information), and the Speed of Sound Decom party was a great success. Was great to catch up with a bunch of folk that night. My contribution was to make sure our Big Nob Bruce and the lovely Kathy were present at the meeting in the form of larger than life mannequins. They had pride of place at the front of the dancefloor, and later in the night, leaning by the bar.

Gotta go. Happy Easter to all of you. I am writing this at 35000 ft above the Pacific while on the way to the States for another work trip - Americans don’t seem to take much of a break at Easter – the conference I am going to finishes on Good Friday. Of course I will find time to get my feet firmly on some Nevada desert dirt afterwards. Fieldwork to do and a desert fix to be satisfied!

Yonderman xx





********************************************************************************************

Emails from the Ozzies



Hi Mark,

Things are starting to come togethor and Phil tells me there is the
possibility that some Kiwi Burners might cross the Tasman for the weekend.
That would be great.

Also our website has had it¹s first overhaul, some more modification is in
the works, for now though it will do. I would like to have a forum there for
Aussies wanting to Kiwi Burn and as such I would certainly appreciate the
main contact details, ie email/website for organisers and the event should
they be different.

Glad to read that your burn went well this year, sounds like the support was
solid.

Feel free to register at the site, I will be sure to give you editor status
should you wish to contribute an article or two on the Kiwi scene.

Peace and happy travels.

Robin



Peace

A Human


Address: PO Box 49
Elwood Vic 3184
Australia
Email: ahuman@burningmanaustralia.com
Website: burningmanaustralia.com
Skype: burningmanaustralia









hey there yonderman



things are moving along with the plans for our burning seed gathering in june. Robin, our regional rep, is getting a new burningmanaustralia.com website together as we speak and I expect he will be in touch with you soon. I heard from rich d rich as well and he sounds keen to try and make it out here. It would be great to have a kiwi contingent in attendance.



Do you think you will be able to make it? And are you heading out to the playa this year?



Keep in touch, look forward to hearing from you soon



Cheers



sherpa

[yonderman]

Greetings people
Any chance of any of you being able to attend the Ozzy burn planning event in early to mid June? Read below, and see if you can be part of a great thing - the development of a burn event in OZZY!!
Yonderman
PS am not sure how many of you get to see my postings - its kinda buried in this News and Updates...be great to hear from a few more of you. Thanks to those of you who have replied to my postings..


From: A Human <seed@burningmanaustralia.com>
Subject: Yonderman, Oz Burn Seed Gathering
To: nzburningman@yahoo.com
Date: Friday, May 8, 2009, 3:35 PM


Hi Yonderman,

The time of the Burning Seed gathering is rapidly approaching. This is the
first major step in initiating a Burning Man community in Australia and we
hope you will be able to join us.

The Seed is about getting people together that are interested in Burning Man
culture and in organizing the first ever regional Australian Burn. As a Seed
gathering it is not intended to be a full scale Burn but rather a forum to
begin discussing and planning all aspects of staging a Burning Man festival
in Australia and to have some fun while doing it. If you would like to be
involved and have input from the beginning of this movement then we would
love to see you there.

The Seed will take place from Friday 5th June until Monday 8th June at a
property in the Bellingen Valley where we have kindly been given the space
to gather. We have a limit for this initial gathering of 150 people, and we
would like to start getting an idea of numbers, so if you are definitely
coming or are thinking about it, please let us know your intentions. As this
is only a small gathering and to be respectful of our hosts, we will only
disclose directions to the land in the week before the event. We ask that
you respect the limited nature of this gathering by not spreading the word
far and wide. We hope that after this initial Seed planting we will be able
to hold a larger scale event next year and that when we have gathered
enough momentum we can stage a regional Burning Man somewhere in the
Australian desert. For now, we hope to have a bunch of great people
camping together, sharing ideas and having a good time.

There are no tickets for the Seed, however we are all expected to
contribute the regular camping fees asked by the host community of $5 per
person per night. There are composting toilets and showers on the site,
which is located in a beautiful riverside spot. Otherwise, in the spirit of
Burning Man, we are all expected to be self sufficient and self reliant, and
to leave no trace when we are gone. If you are not familiar with the 10
principles of Burning Man , you should check out burningman.com to see what
it is all about as the Seed will be adhering to these same principles. You
will need to bring everything you need to survive over the weekend,
including food, shelter and water etc.

For those coming from around the country and beyond, Bellingen is on the NSW
mid-north coast, about half an hour south of Coffs Harbour, where there is
an airport with regular flights to most major cities. Alternatively it
within 6-8 hours driving distance from Sydney or Brisbane.

We hope this email finds you well and happy. Please feel free to get in
touch and ask any questions if you need to.

Keep up to date through the website and or email via

seed@burningmanaustralia.com

See you out there

Phil (Seed Co-ordinator)



A Human
Oz Regional Burn
Address: Po Box 2012
Cairns Qld
4870
Australia
Email: seed@burningmanaustralia.com
Website: burningmanaustralia.com

[Nitro]

I see your postings!

Not sure if this is the best place to suggest this, and I'm not sure if any regional is doing this yet, but I'd like to suggest that regions have a ranger swap programme as a benefit of being an "official" burning man regional.

What I'm thinking is that regoinals could set aside x tickets (doesn't need to be many!) for rangers from the regionals/main burn to go to other burns and learn/share their knowledge.
While it's unreasonable to ask regional burns to fund people getting to the burns, this could be a way to help want to learn from others (e.g. for us, we could see how nowhere and afrikaburns are doing things and vice versa, the Aussieburn guys might want to get some ideas for their first year...).

Doing it by setting aside a number of tickets would facilitate knowledge sharing and create an "official channel" to go through so rangers could attend a different burn and get "paired up" with their counterparts to pick their brains.. so to speak...

[Hana]

Alphamatrix, i like it! Good idea!

[yonderman]

Greetings Kiwiburners,

Time for a brief winter message. Been a while since I last spoke to you. Here are some items of interest, chat and whatever else you want to get out of it:

• For those of you who haven’t seen it, please check out the Kiwiburn 2009 Afterburn report. It’s a nice piece of work achieved collectively by your wonderful kiwiburn committee (the excomm), and you can find it on the website under the title “Afterburn”. I sent it to the Burningman office in San Francisco some weeks back, and they loved it. Incidently, when they received it they quickly sent back their annual checklist of questions to ascertain that we are still doing everything right to be an official regional event. Really, the Afterburn report speaks for itself, but in the all-American way they still like to hear it from me explicitly.

• 4-6 Sept is Melting Man, our downunder burner gathering that coincides with the timing of the big event on the playa in Nevada. Kathy is doing a fantastic job of site selection, planning etc etc for the event. Please contact Kathy via the kiwiburn.com forums if you want to get more information, or write to me and I will put you in touch with her. Kathy has to keep Melting Man from totally public broadcasting on account of it being held on private land. I am planning on attending my first Melting Man this year, and giving the playa a miss after having been to 12 burningmans. I will miss the playa when the time comes, but: (a) am looking forward to Melting Man, and; (b) I will be all the more fired up for burningman next year!

• We will have kiwiburn representation at the two other big international regional events this year. Wendy aka Dr Windy and Joel aka Jetpilot are heading to AfricaBurns in Sept (“LIONS!!” as Doc Windy shouts on regular occasion…I am soooo jealous  ), and Rich D Rich and others are at Nowhere (UK/Europe) in July. As usual we will have a number of kiwiburners at burningman this year. Allyn aka Chew Toy is leading a team of friends to the playa, and Kiwi is deeply involved with DPW again this year. I imagine (though haven’t touched base in awhile) that Tuatha will again be deeply involved with the Rangers this year. Tuatha – I look forward to the next time we catch up in a bar in downtown London!..or better still..at kiwiburn 2010!

• The Australians have finally managed to get their act together in organising a regional event, or at least the start of one. The regional Sherpa, along with some trusted friends held an event on the east coast in early June to establish critical mass and infrastructure. From all accounts it was greatly successful, with over 100 in attendance. Unfortunately no kiwiburners resident in NZ or Aust could attend, but I have promised to put that right next year. I would have gone there, but I was in Germany on a work trip at the time.

• On the regular year to year organisational stuff, the excomm folk have been doing a great job. Decisions on dates, security, where to from here etc etc. On the one hand this all gets easier as the committee gain cumulative experience, and on the other hand it gets more challenging to accommodate the vast new experiences gained from the previous event. Much for instance has been learnt from the experiences of the MUDFOPs (Mug Under Duress, Finger on Pulse – the key responsible senior person in charge for a given 6 hour period of the event) and this is still being processed and assimilated by the excomm.

• Radical Inclusion. There have been some disturbing events in recent weeks involving feuds between, shall we say, “passionate” burners. While this is not an infrequent happening in burner circles, the disturbing thing is that one particular feud resulted in an attempt to violate the fundamental burner principle of Radical Inclusion. While the particular incident in mind (an attempt to bar a burner from a kiwiburn event) is thankfully now in the past, it is worth reminding folk that we are a burningman regional community and we need to hold onto ALL burner principles. They are ALL commonsense principles, and if you are in doubt as to what they are then please check out burningman.com. Enough said 

• At burningman this year the regional contacts will establish their own theme camp (Regionalville) for the first time. While I am not all that comfortable with the concept of regionals setting up their own camp cf spreading themselves around the event, I will be interested to see how it goes. I will let you know on the basis of what I hear from my trusty trusted sources.

Anyway, I had better go for now. Sorry again that it’s been so long since I last sent a message out. While I have long known that kiwiburn takes care of itself, I still like to say “hi” now and then 

See as many of you as possible in the not too distant future.

YonderMark  

NZ Burningman Regional Contact.

[Tuatha]

I'll be also running Ranger Outpost Moscow this year, located close to center camp (not to be confused with Ranger HQ on the Esp)

Feel free to swing by and say hello, if im not around feel free to ask any passing ranger to find me on the radio, as its generally surgically attached at the start of the event.

[yonderman]

Greetings Kiwiburners

There is a hive of burner activity at the present time, so I will keep this message short and simple as many of you will have your plates full with burner-related preparations.

Lots of burner events are coming up, and I wanted to wish you all the best for all of them. Burningman is on very soon, and again a number of kiwiburners are heading over. All the best you guys! I wont be there for the first time in ages, so hope that someone sometime during the week does something kiwiburner related someplace and somehow Allyn, Lynda and Bex, hope you take your Rocky Horror party costumes over the playa to show off there as well (they would have gone down a treat in Spikes Vampire bar, but I think Spikes is no more). Tuatha, hope your theme camp goes well, and Fi/Rich, enjoy your reunion on the playa! Oh and Kiwi - hope its all going well in DPW-space...I can hear you saying "I love this shit!!"

Melting Man is on 4-5 Sept, and Kathy has been doing a great job of making it happen in the hills of north Canterbury. Melting Man is our annual "we're not going to burningman" party. I am going to Melting Man this year and looking forward to it!

Dr Windy and Dr Jetpilot are heading to Afrikaburn in early Sept. That is very exciting, and the excitement was certainly all over their faces when they came for lunch the other day. Rich, Tuatha and others have also been to Nowhere, so we have certainly had kiwiburner representation worldwide this year.

Congrats to Dr York...another PhD in our midst. Whoo hoo! See you this Friday to celebrate.

Must go. Please tell me all about your adventures when you have a chance.

YonderMark

[yonderman]

Greetings Kiwiburners
May I be the first to wish you a happy kiwiburn year, ahead of time. We are almost upon Kiwiburn time, and I am sure many of you are working hard on theme camps, art structures and the like. I know the Excomm have been working feaverisly on preparations, and the first Excommers, MPWs and others will be at the site this coming weekend. So exciting. After a year of busy travelling and some theme camp planning setbacks I only just got on to making my annual art project contribution a few days ago! I am part of the fabulous Illuminati Temple sound camp this year, a camp that will rock, and may actually be able to boast a burningman record of having the largest number of PhDs in one camp (4 in total). So if you want to know about things of deeply esoteric scientific signigifance in addition to having a fabulous dance time, then come to Illuminati!

So I wont go into the vast number of preparations underway for kiwiburn (you will see for yourselves in the forums). What I will tell you is a significant regional happening that has not been formally announced as yet. We are to be visited by officials from the Burningman office in San Francisco for the first time. Maid Marian (Burningman 2IC) and Meghan (Regional Coordinator) are flying over for Kiwiburn, and will be on site the whole time. I will meet them in Auckland and drive down with them to the site on Thursday, and they will drive up and fly out on Monday (y'know - the corporate burner lifestyle ). While many Kiwiburners will be indifferent about their presence at Kiwiburn, I see it as a long awaited acknowledgement of their high regard for Kiwiburn. I have asked them to say some words at Centre Camp at some stage. Look at the Centre Camp noticeboard - likely they will talk on burn day when the local public are allowed in to the event. Otherwise talk to them or dont talk to them. I am sure they will thoroughly enjoy just "being" at Kiwiburn without any official responsibilities. Tentatively they will be camping with us at Illuminati. Fargo Dan will also be back over from the States, and camping at Illuminati as well.

Anyway, better go for now. Looking forward to seeing you all.

Yonderman x

[RantyDave]

I thought we were doing public on the first day and not the last this year...

[Rich]

We aren't having a tea party at all this year. Anyone wanting to come has to buy a ticket ($40 for locals) and join in properly....