Next week starting April 1st will be the annual Leadership Summit and Regional Conference in San Francisco. Many issues will be discussed as well as tools provided that will help some of us with the things we do with our communities. I discovered this last year while it was underway and was determined to go the next time it was on!
Why was I invited? Well, at first you might say I impressed myself because I wanted to meet and learn from Stephen Raspa. If you do not know who he is then… well, then you don’t know Burning Man. It is not unlike saying who is Marian Goodell and who is Larry Harvey.
Well, another reason I was invited is because I am a candidate for a Regional Contact position in Vegas which has been a process for a few months now following an extensive interview process. That is a story for another day.
The Question
So I ask you; Do we as the queer burners have any special needs/considerations/positions that needs addressing? I would love to bring anything from OUR sub-community… is that even the right word? Are we really integrated with the Burner community as a whole or are we that politely acknowledged presence of the would be super-liberals…? HA HA HA… not so much a serious question as cankerous nudge in the ribs of anyone wondering about social dilemmas. (No, I don’t really know either).
We the People
There is a full schedule of classes ranging from event setup to dealing with social and political issues in the community. Some classes I would take are layered on top of each other which means I had to choose one or the other. For example, Fridays classes are “Mailman Training” v. “CORE Project Leaders” which was a simple choice in my case with the CORE project off my grid at the moment (Mailman refers to keepers of community lists and how much should be throttled and moderated).
Classes range from Public Relations, Event Planning, and Ranger resources… a lot of arms to this thing we call Burning Man and how to hopefully strengthen the community and the resources of same. The community is Black Rock City, all the Regions beyond that, then the pods/cells/fractures within. I know one question being asked is how do we deal with the fractures within communities and should we?
Conclusion
So, I will be posting about this as I go and be on my cell at all times. Feel free to text me or email.
