D18 Cell Leads feedback on MOOP Map

Email sent to all Cell Leads

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 7:16 PM The Eye <the.eye@disorient.info> wrote: D18 Cell Leads:

The preliminary 2018 MOOP Map results were released, and the DPW Playa Restoration team assigned Disorient all yellow with several red hot spots (see attached). According to DPW, this means that Disorient required either “Moderate” (yellow) or “Difficult” (red) clean-up efforts in order for Burning Man restore our designated area to the Leave No Trace standards put in place by the Bureau of Land Management. This may impact Disorient’s standing with the Placement team and have other consequences, such as a reduction in the number of Directed Group Sale tickets we are allotted.

We have an opportunity to ask for more precise information about what the Resto team found during its post-Burn inspection of Disorient. We also want to communicate with both the Disorient and greater Burning Man communities about these results. Before we take these steps, we would like feedback from all D18 Cell Leads on the following:

1. How do you think your cell contributed to this result? 2. What can your cell do differently to help Disorient return to green in the future? 3. Do you have constructive feedback for other cells about how they can help Disorient return to green?

This is an internal thread intended to be constructive, so please keep this in mind when you respond.

Thank you,

Disorient

Responses from Cell Leads

Peter

From: Peter Dwyer <peter.dwyer@icxtg.com> Subject: Re: (Last chance) D18 Cell Leads feedback on MOOP Map (action required) Date: November 25, 2018 at 1:14:31 PM GMT+8

Please see my thoughts below.

Sincere apologies in not responding earlier.

1. How do you think your cell contributed to this result?
Perhaps thinking naively: I think we had a good handle on the MOOP coming from the eNT. We took care during the setup and packing up of the truck and lights. Did what we could with the Playtrium. I thought there was good camp support in cleanup of that area as well. Though, there was a table/surface that accumulated random stuff. Lesson: remove all surfaces!

2. What can your cell do differently to help Disorient return to green in the future?
Remove surfaces! Take the trash out early and often? (Lessen the load of the camp’s trash container at the end of the event).

3. Do you have constructive feedback for other cells about how they can help Disorient return to green?
Here’s a half baked idea: Small team that handles the final sweep for MOOP. They get to go to Reno for a night or two and recharge and come back for a solid day to go over the camp? Details and logistics not thought through. But fresh hands and eyes might help.

Natalie

From: "NN | Disorient" <natalie@disorient.info> Subject: Re: D18 Cell Leads feedback on MOOP Map (action required) Date: November 13, 2018 at 4:57:33 AM GMT+8

The Eye,

Thanks for gathering this feedback and sorry for my slow response.

Registration

During registration, I track numbers to ensure there are adequate people in camp for Disengage on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday through departure. This year, a lot of people who indicated during registration that they would be staying until Monday or later left camp ahead of their promised departure date. I'm not really sure how to prevent this from happening — people have bad trips, breakups, illnesses, and get burned out and decide to leave the playa early every year (but this year seemed especially bad). I guess we need to take the number of people we think we need and increase it by a percentage to cover the vacancies left by early/unexpected departures.

I have been in touch with Ben (Cowbell), who is interested in leading Disengage again next year. He would like to have increased direct email communication with Disengage team members throughout the duration of the registration period to motivate his team and increase accountability. I'm happy to work with him on this from the start of registration next year.

We also need someone to interface between the registration team and cell members to make sure shifts are covered and cell lead needs are met. Sasha has offered to step up and fill this role for D19 and I think she'd be a great fit. She assisted with a few registration tasks this year and did an excellent job. We have plans to speak more about this soon.

I think we should consider additional incentives for Disengage team members, such as being given priority in the Directed Group Sale (assuming we have access to this again next year and in the future). We should also consider issuing full rebates or dues scholarships to "last-on-playa" Disorienters who stay until Tuesday or Wednesday.

Disorient-it-Yourself and the Dis|Co Lounge

DIY workshops are a MOOP risk because the projects involve cutting, soldering, gluing, and small parts. We laid ground cloths to cover the entire Dis|Co Lounge floor (with excess surrounding the tent walls) and I used foam matting under the work tables to catch any small pieces. We vacuumed using a shop vac at the end of the week during Disengage before removing the ground cloth and took extra care not to shake these out on playa. I disposed of the ground cloth because even after vacuuming, these had micro MOOP on them that would have found its way back to the playa next year.

If this project comes back next year (and I hope it does), I would like to have a dedicated shop vac in the space and to shop vac after every single workshop to pick up small bits so they don't travel outside the tent walls or get picked up on people's shoes. I also want to do more regular sweeps of the outside of the tent. Some material inevitably makes its way outside the tent walls and I want to be more proactive about this.

The DIY guest artists are all long-time burners who do a really good job of thinking about LNT in planning their workshops, but I will make sure to stress the importance of this guest artists in the future.

More Constructive Feedback

In my opinion, one of our biggest missteps this year were delays in core build teams arriving on playa. With projects as big and ambitious as Pod Mahal going up in camp, we need to have teams staged in the event area the weekend before gates open to Work Access Pass holders and be first through the gates. I've started to see other large theme camps do this (both Camp Walter and Robot Heart had teams and production vehicles in Fernley/Gerlach the weekend before build week).

We had ample Monday Work Access Passes and people who intended to be there by that time. The Pod Mahal caravan was delayed and I'm guessing this had something to do with the fact that ground cloths (which were purchased for Pod Mahal ahead of time by Nitro/camp) were not placed prior to setting up the structure. If we cut wood on playa (and if we must do this, it should be done exclusively in containers), we need to have someone standing by with shop vac ready to immediately address any chips, sawdust, or splinters. I have watched other Burners do this on build sites — that is how vigilant others are around this issue.

We also need to rethink our truck and transportation logistics for next year. The LA truck had key LNT tools (magnetic rakes, contractor bags, trash bins, ground cloths, etc.) on board and was delayed for a number of reasons. Getting people and supplies out to playa earlier is going to be critical if we want to continue to be this ambitious. And we're Disorient, so I'm guessing even a "scaled back" camp would be fairly extravagant.

I agree with Ocean and others that LNT and Disengage begin in Alpha. There needs to be greater emphasis on this during production planning and Alpha.

I think all major project leads should be required to check in with the LNT and Disengage leads in advance of having their project approved by the core production team.

Thanks again for taking the lead on this and I look forward to continuing the dialogue as we ramp up planning for D19.

Pornj love,

So On It | natalie@disorient.info

Sofy

From: Sofy Yuditskaya <marysghost@gmail.com> Subject: Re: D18 Cell Leads feedback on MOOP Map (action required) Date: October 28, 2018 at 7:18:08 AM GMT+8

Sensor Gates In Camp: We did lay down ground cloths where we were working on Sensor Gates. We did cut wood in the containers.

We did not do moop sweeps during Alpha, we just knew to pick things up if we saw them. We did not have dedicated time, during build to sweep and do nothing else. This was a mistake.

Disengage and the big Red Zones in front of camp: We did not have enough people for Disengage. We could have remediated a lot of the damage but it was simply not possible due to lack of hands. There was a lot of wood on the ground.

I don’t know why all the camping areas got yellow tho, we mooped those areas during Disengage and they were quite fine. I feel like maybe Resto yellowed it because the other areas were so bad, the playa around tents and RVs, the louge, containers, and the open area in the middle of camp was clean.

The mini red spots at the back of camp: Looks like it was the burn barrel, dukes, the generator, and an RV? These are confusing, I did not do any sweeps at Dukes but did sweep the other areas and I didn’t pick up any more moop there than in the rest of camp. I wonder what Resto found there.

At Sensor Gates and TOI: We did multiple moop sweeps at Sensor Gates and TOI during build and after breakdown in multiple waves of ad hoc teams. Ocean and I secretly went out by ourselves and did some additional one woman sweeps. That area got praise for cleanliness from the Artery. Secret work, multiple people keeping an eye on the situation, and massive organized work combined seems to have been a great system.

Ria

From: Ria Rajan <ria.rajan@gmail.com> Subject: Re: D18 Cell Leads feedback on MOOP Map (action required) Date: October 23, 2018 at 7:30:54 PM GMT+8

Eye,

Thank you for including me in this conversation. The MOOP map is definitely indicative of the scale and the spread of projects we had in camp this year.

Given the scale of the projects, thinking about the LNT efforts and impact should be considered during the planning phase itself. Each Cell would benefit from having an LNT lead, whose primary responsibility is to ensure that all the best practices are implemented during built and disengage. This also reduces the pressure and effort required by the DISENGAGE crew towards the end. Having a small crew to take the lead on LNT would help in the execution right from the start. Alpha tends to be a handful of people focussed on building camp and having a dedicated team working on it would only be beneficial to camp as a whole.

Also, wood chips seem to be the biggest contributor of MOOP so we ought to be extra vigilant while using it as a material to build structures and frontage. They are also the hardest to contain and tend to spread easily. While we were careful about laying down ground cloth before starting to build GeoTem, and would sweep the work area regularly, there were times when we strayed of course and were assembling directly on playa. Also, a lot of the wood we were using was old and brittle. Since we burned a lot of our wood this year, hopefully, we will have less brittle materials to work with in the future.

Frontage is our shining glory and one of our biggest gifts to playa. It is also one of the biggest projects in terms of time, effort and resources and invariably tends to be the most problematic as far as MOOP goes as, considering how much wood was used. Perhaps, now is the opportunity to rethink the materials we use and also look at other ways for us to bring and share all that we have to offer, in terms of art, music and the DISORIENT experience.

Looking forward to the constructive evolution of this thread.

Bacchus

From: Dave Marglin <emailin@gmail.com> Subject: Re: D18 Cell Leads feedback on MOOP Map (action required) Date: October 29, 2018 at 7:33:04 AM GMT+8

The Eye. Hi from Porto, Portugal.

I guess I don't have much to add on this, other than I think The ENTity and the Playtrium seem not to have been so much the problem (though we live and DeMOOP as a Camp). Maybe the urge to build high and to have a big tank of water should be revisited. We try new things, and I love the ambition, and the genius of providing a well.

And a high-rise! However, a high value is placed on being Green/Yellow as a Camp, and given a choice in the future, I'd rather we not have things that create lots of MOOP that is hard if not impossible to De-MOOP. We strive to get better, year over year, and this seems like a place where we can think through--do we need a big tank of water (and if we do, how do we make sure the tank doesn't leak, or as happened in 2015, get emptied suddenly onto the Playa by someone not turning off properly...?

DO we need a high rise Pod Mahal, and if we want such elaborate structures, how do we make sure the wood chips don't make a big mess? Is the Mahal worth the Flame, so to speak?

I hold The Sign On Wheels/ENTity team to a high standard--we are the Eminent Front. We build a Sign.

Lots of learnin' and thinkin' to do for next year. I see shapes, shades.

I love To Burn with you.

my two cents (minus two cents since decommodification principle)...

how much weight do you think Placement will put on our Camp in terms of next year's location for Disorient..?

Bacchus

Ocean

From: Leslie <oceanfiretribal@gmail.com> Date: October 21, 2018 at 2:14:58 AM GMT+7 Subject: Fwd: D18 Cell Leads feedback on MOOP Map (action required)

Thanks The Eye.

Since many people are not on facebook, and since no one (except for Ted) asked me for insight about what has caused this problem, before asking these questions, here is my assessment of the state of camp and problem areas on our final day. I will respond separately to ask the questions you have posed here, which I think are constructive but should be targeted to specific people/teams.

- - - Following Natalie Nicol's post, I wanted to share my LNT assessment during disengage and how we got here. My perspective on what rating we earned differs from the moop map - but overall I think evens out (and I explain why below).

First: There are a lot of things we did right in 2018. The kitchen, lounge, much of the camper area, areas around the containers and common areas were covered in ground cloths. It is really great to see this becoming the norm after we introduced drop cloths in 2011, the first GeoTem.

(added): As far as I'm concerned, the following teams and areas of camp received GREEN status: - DKitchen - Lounge - Both banks of RVs (with one grey water spill identified and addressed) - Most of the campers under the orange shade (there were a few exceptions that left behind some material items but I could not tell you which camper specifically) - Speakeasy - the open space in camp (area around the generator, for instance) - The Hut of the GlamTech Warrior (including the GeoTem fabrication area behind your camp) - The Disco Lounge

The following are YELLOW: - Containers, although there were drop cloths, it did take some time to clean around them and the dumpster - Showers/DKitchen grey water tanks: because USS gave us an obviously poorly repaired tank that leaked all week (and could not be mitigated because tarps were not placed under the tanks) so we had one big grey water spill

The following are RED: - Pod Mahal (wood chip apocalypse, and in fact, I would have personally given this a BLACK rating, which in DPW is reserved for the worst kind of problems) - Frontage (only because once the frontage was down, this area was used to stage Pod Mahal wood for packing)

Overview: Overall, RV campers kept their area pretty clean -- no gold star or glitter explosions, feathers, pieces of fur and the like that we've seen in years past. Our tent campers also in general did a pretty good job of maintaining their areas. I feel there was much less camper moop/stuff left behind than in any previous year. I also personally mooped the speakeasy, which was fully tarped with our disorient mats and ground cloths, and would have given it a green rating even before I mooped it. So I would say that LNT with respect to our campers actually was a success with a few issues to work on here and there.

Our biggest challenge camp from camp projects involving wood and metal. I arrived to camp late Friday pre-event and was told that a lot of build activity had occurred directly on the playa - we had a wood chip disaster before the burn even began. I am told that loading/unloading and sawing of wood was happening directly on the playa. In years past, we've used one of the containers as a staging area to saw wood and prevent sawdust and woodchips from hitting the ground and becoming a part of the dust. I don't know why this wasn't done this year, or why the care was not taken to lay ground cloths.

I am told USS delivered one of our tanks late...I am guessing because they ran out of tanks: the tank they gave us late had clearly been repaired, badly, with caulking -- it leaked the entire week as soon as the water reached the line. In years past we had laid tarps underneath the placement of the tanks. I don't know why this didn't occur in 2018. But the ensuing seven day long leak was not something that we were able to successfully mitigate during the event, or during disengage with the limited resources who are also working on other camp breakdown projects.

During disengage, and the break down of our frontage, wood was liberally being tossed from the top of the structure onto the playa. When I asked for this to stop, I was told this had been going on for two weeks, and the team continued to toss wood off the top onto the playa, making a lot of wood splinters for us to clean up. This to me is the single most defining moment of our camp's attitude towards moop and the disengage crew. I can't say that it's a very good feeling, especially when the person doing this had previously led disengage and knows better than to throw wood on the bare playa.

Also: people kept throwing scrap wood into the already full burn barrel along with cardboard. This in turn created another mess to clean up. I would be really happy to NOT have a burn barrel in camp next year as this happens every single year.

By the time disengage was able to make time to contribute more than a few people to mooping activities, we had run out of time to clean up the wood chip disaster that was left behind, although on Wednesday afternoon we literally spent hours sitting in the dust and sifting through it to collect the woodchips left behind.

Unfortunately, having worked five years of playa restoration myself, I can tell you that when we (DPW Playa Resto) give someone a yellow or red rating, it is really well earned. It takes a group of about 50 people HOURS and DAYS of time to clean up wood chip messes like the one we left in camp in 2018. It is a huge disregard to the land and also to the people, not only our campers, but playa restoration crew, who clean up the *entire city*. Now imagine that one camp, or one project, takes them more than say an hour to clean up, and imagine the frustration this creates among those doing the work. The ratings on the hand drawn moop map that are given by the playa resto crew are fair and honest and based on the perspective of the moopers themselves...how slow going, or how quickly, we can line sweep through a space.

As for why it's entirely yellow, when in my view the frontage was red and everything else green - that will have to wait until we are able to have a discussion with placement, who receives feedback from playa restoration. But my guess would be that it is a comment from DPW Playa Resto on the shared responsibility of all campers in owning the wood chip disaster on our front porch, and not a reflection of the whole state of camp. We will have to wait and see.

As to what we can do differently going forward: - LNT/Disengage needs visibility into ALL camp projects during the planning phase, before arrival on playa. - Disengage begins in Alpha and supports LNT practices, however, these must be respected and adhered to. For instance, someone was told multiple times to stop sawing wood on the open playa and instead continued to do this. Not cool. - In general, more line sweeps during the event help minimize moop..that said I don't feel we had extensive camp moop due to minimal wind blowing. - The scope of all camp projects cannot exceed the number of resources available to break it down and clean it up. Even if GeoTem had been located near camp, it still would have taken up many resources needed to clean camp (even I was surprised at how long it took to LNT the site...and I must again highlight the fantastic work that Ivan did in leading this cleanup!). So you can have GeoTem and Pod Mahal/frontage: not both. Scale down. - Disengage needs more dedicated resources who are only doing mooping and mitigation. But in general, disengage needs more resources and support so that we can get the job done, and that should be factored in during planning.

We have taken a lot of steps forward since I first started camping with Disorient in 2006, and we've implemented a lot of good practices. This one got away from us, so let's focus on understanding how we got here so that we can implement better practices in 2019.

xOcean

Freeman

From: Freeman Murray <freeman@jaaga.in> Subject: Re: Rornj Date: October 15, 2018 at 2:02:51 PM GMT+8

I'm afraid I'm to blame for the red around podMahal. My guess is they were pissed at picking up wood chips and didn't bother being super precise after that.

Some of the wood chips were just the result of moving lots of wood around. There were also a couple of places where we had to cut plywood on location so that we could fit lights or stairs or just to make things fit.

My crew did a bit of mooping before we left Tuesday but everyone was tired and antsy to leave...

Part of the answer is probably to be more strict about setting up and using cutting stations inside a container.

Also having more fresh people at the final stage of disengage.

...

Freeman