Growth & Identity: A Dialogue with Burning Man

#sxsw #BRCculture

Iap25445

ATTENTION: You must signup in advance to attend this workshop. You will need to have a valid SXSW badge, and an activated SXsocial account. To reserve your seat, please go here: https://sup.sxsw.com/schedule/IAP25445

What steps can be taken to ensure that your culture isn't diluted while your audience increases exponentially? Can you stay true to your organization's identity and founding intentions when it's your participant base that continues to define your culture out in the world? How can you maintain your vision while supporting the individual agency of your participants?

In this two and a half hour long workshop, join key Burning Man organizers to explore the challenges they've confronted in the face of extreme growth and popularity. How has Burning Man handled the shift from its origins as a loosely affiliated group of disenfranchised artists to a multi-million dollar business and cultural touchstone? Learn how Burning Man has employed UX, social media, grass-roots organizational techniques and business strategy in tandem to help scale collaborative culture and how you can apply some of these practices to enhance collaborative engagement and ensure that authenticity of experience remains intact.

Prerequisites:
- Only prerequisites are an open mind and a desire to explore creative ways to handle the challenges that growth can present.

What to Bring:
- Participants should come prepared for lively idea exchange and be armed with examples of challenges their organizations are facing with regard to cultural growth, organizational expansion, and community engagement.

Presenters

Megan Miller

Public Rel Mgr

Burning Man

Megan joined the Burning Man staff as Public Relations Manager in 2012. She works with participants, volunteers, government agencies, the media, affiliated organizations and the broader public to keep information moving to and from Burning Man Headquarters. She manages Burning Man's communications strategies and oversees Media Mecca, the Black Rock City Census, and Burning Man Information Radio (BMIR). Before the playa stole her heart, Megan spent ten years in the public and nonprofit sectors working for environmental protection, HIV/AIDS prevention, political campaigns and a United States Senator. Megan was born and raised in Alaska. She earned a B.A. in English & Art History from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec and is a 2007 Graduate of the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs.

Rebecca Throne

Ticket Operations Mgr

Burning Man

Rebecca Throne has been Burning Man's head of Ticketing since 2007. She first attended Burning Man in 1999 and began working with the organization as a volunteer in 2001 with the Center Camp Café. Seeing firsthand the need to actively foster community and create organization to support the 500+ volunteer base of the Café, she pioneered the role of Volunteer Community Manager. She continues to focus on the social implications of ticketing strategies, as well as helping to facilitate critical communications to the Burning Man community through producing the annual printed Survival Guide and WhatWhereWhen handbook of participant events. Rebecca has studied and made art her whole life, and prior to working for Burning Man she worked in branding and creative direction, business innovation strategy, and finance. When not working on Burning Man projects, she is happily raising two young Burners in San Francisco.

Silvia Stephenson

Web Prod Mgr/UX Mgr

Burning Man

Self proclaimed technology junkie, advocate of User Experience, lover of beautiful design, typography, art and snark. Silvia is a veteran of advertising agencies, boutique graphic design and web development groups and just a few of the Silicon Valley tech giants. After years of consulting, team management and working with some of the most influential and creative technology teams the opportunity to apply all these experiences came about with a position at Burning Man. Silvia joined the Burning Man Technology Team in 2011 and currently drives new web product initiatives, evangelizes responsive mobile web development, best practices all the while addressing the importance of user experience from a holistic perspective. She can be found being slightly snarky on Twitter at @thesilvias.