scott.kay

find me on social media as #iamscottkay

2013 Theme Announced

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2013 Burning Man ThemeIt came out today and depending on your point of view… I think it seems pretty cool. So I am looking forward to what the coming year will bring with vision and creativity. Yay for us.

QueerBurners.Com also appeared in the JRS today. Well, I wrote the note that appeared because i am trying very hard to show we are radically inclusive. Why? Because someone (okay several someones) said we were not. Some of those were inside our own community.

Recently I made a x-post of an event and it was asked if it was being run by Queer Burners. It should never keep any member of the community at-large from being a participant. I did say community. That means the Burning Man Community and our LGBTQ++ community.

So, raise a glass with me at the next meetup and let’s look forward to an amazing new season.

We are <3

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Site Registration is back open today because of the article that appeared on the JRS today. I am so grateful we have the community that we have and I hope to see it blossom even more over time. Like Burning Man itself, this project is stronger with member participation. Join and help do!

It is IMPORTANT that you complete your profile questionnaire and answer the verification email sent to you. Any questions please use the contact form. 🙂

Project Update

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Right now my priority list is:

  • Quire: 2 or 3 Camp Outs for 2013/Regioanals
  • Quire: Queer Burner Leadership Summit 2013
  • Queer Burners: 5 years in 2013
  • Queer Burners: Massive Site Update

Members and participants are always welcome to give their input, take over some of the batons, or implement ideas. The Quire Page (linked above) has a place to start sharing projects and linking back to it from anywhere. Make a post for it as well! Just sign in and write it up. I will publish it after making sure the formatting is good.

Love & Light

New Membership Suspended

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All new memberships are on hold til January 2013. Use the contact form to request a membership that will be manually put in with: your user name, default world name and email address. I will give you a default password you can change… and all you have to do next is complete your profile.

Coming Soon… UPDATES!

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Since the last post there have been some cool things going in with some of the do’ers here on Queer Burners. The Quire: QUEER BURNER LEADERSHIP NETWORK and a lot of the dialog does take place on Facebook. It does seem to provide the easiest access for the general population. You will see many of those posts in the Twitter feed in the side column.

Quire is a space for the people who are willing to invest themselves on some level to help make the things that go on here happen. If this is not you, then enjoy the Gay Burners page (5 years old in 2013) and the Queer Burners Group (more social).

Enough of that! Let’s talk about some of the fun stuff coming up!!!!

Well, and some of the other stuff too!

With the upcoming 5 year anniversary goals for 2013 include: (Events Page on QB.Com)

  • Queer Burner Leadership Summit (TBD before April)
  • “Sweet Thing” Queer Burner Camp-Out /  Retreat
  • San Francisco Gay Pride Parade
  • “The Village Q” @ Element-11 in July 2013

For now that is it and this is an update to the previous posting.

Quire; Queer+Fire

There is a link to the Quire web site above in the tool bar. Be a part of it if you want to make great things happen. Yes… I said mutha-f’kin great!

BMorg (Burning Man Headquarters)

We have been described by some burners as isolating ourselves frim the rest of the Burner community which I feel is really a misconception. So I have taken steps to try and address this with the powers that be to show ourselves as a pro-active force when it comes to community and the 10 principles. Here is a letter I am working on that will be going out this coming week:

This is Scott K aka Toaster from QueerBurners [dot] Com also known as GayBurners [dot] Com … I have been in touch with the Regionals contacts in the past a few times and have at one time been a candidate for a Regional Contact role when I lived in Las Vegas. I created a network for LGBTQ+ Burners because there was a need I discovered to provide a resource for this segment of the Burner Culture.

I am writing hoping to engage in a dialog that will help us be a better part of the community at large. It has come to my attention there is an idea in the Burning Man Organization (BMorg) that the network I started, then let grow, is an attempt to segregate ourselves from the rest of the Burner community as a whole. I hope to show you and anyone inside the construct of Burning Man that this is as far from the truth as possible.

This notion that we were segregating ourselves came to me from a trustworthy and reliable source who heard this at Burning Man main office. We are interested in suggestions of what we can bring to the table to improve our relationship. This is not someone I would like to see exposed for passing this information on but I am thankful for providing insight into how we can improve our mutual understanding.

I did post this concern on one of our boards and got some very interesting feedback… it is on the Gay Burners Facebook Page and I invite anyone to look at it at their convenience.

We (yes, we) want to:

  • show that we art partners in the application of the 10 principles in every way possible
  • help convey the message from BMorg and other lateral communities into our community
  • be a part of the future of the culture and whatever direction that takes

On a side note from me personally (Scott aka Toaster): if there is a history that has affected our ability to develop projects together I would like to ask if we can suspend that and start over.

Expectations

None. By reaching out we hope to erase the idea that we are attempting to operate outside of the Burning Man principle Radical Inclusion. In fact, we have been striving to do the opposite.

What we bring to the table

  • maintaining our mailing list of 2000 people and network of more than twice that
    holding regular events with open invitations on our list and other burner networks of all camps and orientations
  • bringing our unique culture to the burner community much as the “Gayborhood” and other Queer pockets at Burning Man have done over the years

in 2013 we are looking at our 5 year anniversary and will be planning events of our own and will be going to support and participate in other regional events including Element-11; all detailed on our main Facebook; and a 2013 Queer Burner Leadership Summit

3 facebook groups, 1 facebook page and our web site

What we hope to convey

the Queer-Burner project is really no different than any of the regional communities out there with participants

  • the members of this community bring a lot to the table every year without need or desire for any special recognition because it is simply what we do to participate and gift when we can to the community.

Conclusion

Just on the few bullet points above and before the season starts making us all nuts can we arrange a meeting at BMorg with the Regionals Office, Placement and anyone else with an interest. I would like to bring Kitten from Comfort & Joy and Foxy from Camp Beaverton Home for Wayward Girls with myself. We come to listen and share with the effort to build a better relationship with the organization that started what we have adopted in our lives within our collective as part of the over all Burner Culture.

Burning Man Regional Conference / Regional Conference

I would like to attend this year again representing my community and bring some of my strongest partners including Kitten and Foxy. Thank you.

2nd of 3 announced

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The 2nd of 3 projected events by Queer Burners was “announced” this week… but only in the planning stages. Almost as quickly as we started planting seeds we got growth and will keep working to make these great things happen:

  1. Sweet Think & 2013 QBLSMarch 2013 “Sweet Thing” Camp Out and 2nd annual Queer Burner Leadership Summit all at the same time; YOU DO NOT have to attend any leadership summit stuff to enjoy the camp out.
  2. July 2013: “The Village Q” at Salt Lake City’s regional event called Element-11 (element11.org)
  3. Although it has not been released yet, the 3rd event is a proposed presence in the 2013 San Francisco Gay Pride parade

These things sound pretty cool, huh??? Well, a lot of this focus on these projects is being driven on Facebook, but we do have resources here online. There is the Queer Burners page (where one would presume you are reading this entry) and the Quire Page: Queer Burner Leadership Network.

Do you access Facebook?

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What’s Queer?

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You might be asking yourself… this site is for Queers how do I fit in? Of course, the question is obvious on other more relate-able terms.

Queer?

Adjective:Strange; odd: “she had a queer feeling that they were being watched”.

Frankly anyone who goes to Burning Man is queer, and while this site focuses on the LGBTQ++ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans-gender, Queer and all the blurry lines) anyone fits in. We are totally Radical Inclusion here and though many burner communities are strongly united we embrace openly.

Stand outside Comfort & Joy any night at Burning Man and see people from all walks of life gliding through the amazing and engaging camp. Whether coming into the big tent to chill or play or just enjoying the mylar rain outside.

We’re all queer in our own way and we like it.

X-Post from Gay Burners Facebook

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(This is a repost from the Gay Burners page on Facebook. It, according to Facebook, was seen by 261 people as of this x-post and almost no one made comments on the content of it.)

With all the fun stuff there is some serious things too. We take the good and the bad and we deal with it as a community. Never be afraid of offering critical feedback. And if you have suggestions please feel free to share them. Even when a subject makes a person feel uncomfortable it is still important to deal with them. If you have something to add then pARTticpate with immediacy and do it… this project Gay Burners / Queer Burners / Quire is a community driven series of projects.

This is Scott aka Toaster writing after the last 2 posts. Some members of the community have been critical about some of my postings in the past as having been too controversial. The phrase “…more flies with honey” has been thrown around a lot.

Truth is I have struggled a lot with the comments made to me by Andie Grace in the main hall during the Burning Man Regioanal Conference that I attended for the 2nd year in a row in 2012.

Now I see these posts about rape while on the other hand the Placement team did such an amazing job helping build the Gayborhood; and from that came the Gayburbs (see trip report on queerburners.com for details on that).

I read the @Burners.Me article as soon as it came out and let it flow around in my head until I saw the Huffington Post’s article. Even then I held my tongue because I started to realize on Thursday night with a group of Burners that I am invested in this culture very differently than many of my fellow burners.

I see us as being not unlike a congressional district desperately in need to a voice and I think I was trying to be that voice. I have, from the heart, taken on some ugly tasks in this culture where I believed strongly that the 10 Principles were being violated by people who were charged to enforce them. I also took on a Burning Man representative and his partner who were actively attacking specifically female members of the community and ended up landing on my face. I have taken on battles against some great people in this community in leadership positions with a hell of a lot more influence than I and have been knocked down again and again.

Andie Grace aka ActionGirlWhen I stood up at the Leadership Conference for Burning Man Regionals and spoke out I realized I just took another grenade thrown by the Regional Network; specifically Andie Grace. I was at the front of another losing battle when I talked about the concerns that were addressed at the Queer Burner Leadership Summit 2 weeks before.

When I asked for other representatives from the Queer Burner community to come with me to the Regional Leadership Conference the Regional Office said “no”. I was fortunate to attend, but this office in particular ( that includes Megs, Andie Grace [formerly] and Marian Goodell [one of the 6 owners of Burning Man, Director of Communications, and Board Member of the Burning Man Project]) has been highly resistant to giving us an official voice even though we make up a huge part of their census.

There is a flaw in my argument though! When I say we should have a Regional Contact (or 2 or 3) for LGBT people I am not unaware that Radical Inclusion is not part of our community.

My home community, the regional community I was once a part of before moving to San Francisco was Las Vegas and they were so loving and inclusive generally speaking. There was no need, in my opinion, for a separate Regional Contact in my mind back then.

Yet, as I became more involved in the landscape of this culture and invested myself to an “all-in” position I see where this is actually important. We are a community in a community.

When I asked the Regional Network team about this I was dismissed. I was told the BDSM community asked for their own regional, too, where would it stop? Again, the LGBT community was dismissed as if we were part of some chosen quirky lifestyle making unreasonable demands. Yet, 2nd Life (a computer game) has its own freaking regional?

There are Regional Contacts out there who have done NOTHING for the community in years but still hold on to this title for their free ticket to Burning Man each year (a reward for all their work). We do have queer Regional Contacts and I met a lot of them this year; but who are they representing?

Yes, they have a voice for Queer subjects but who is watching out for the LGBT part of burning man. Imagine when Jiffy Lube was being told they had to relocate (way back when) if there was a buffer between them and Larry Harvey… have you seen the videos?

Note to beat a dead horse, but there are some serious disconnects at BMorg and I am personally trying very hard to make this project be a positive representation of what we are bring to the playa and the default world every day.

My personal investment is a little OCD compared to others I see around me. At our San Francisco meet & greet Thursday night I looked around at the people around me. I saw in them a deep commitment to this life. I saw how different it was from mine; NOT THAT MINE IS BETTER! I am saying mine is a little too much sometimes. The issues I bare might not be mine to carry, but I try to do it to make things better for us all and better networked so we queers can help each other with our projects and other functions inside and outside the trash fence.

So with respect and love I invite critical feedback. Don’t shove daisies up my ass and pretend everything is lovely… some have. We need to be able to talk about things and your involvement at the next Queer Burner Leadership Summit in the beginning of 2013 will be invaluable.

When Wal-Mart meets Burning Man

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By Christopher Reynolds
Los Angeles Times staff writer
September 19, 2012, 7:30 a.m.

Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers, Wal-Mart workers and Burning Man personnel. Maybe your hopes and dreams aren’t so different after all.

A couple of weeks ago, traveling in Arkansas, I stopped in at the Bentonville storefront where the Wal-Mart empire began. It’s a visitor center now with exhibits on corporate history. I picked up a brochure listing Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton’s 10 rules for building a business. All very sensible and offered in six languages. I stuffed the brochure into my pocket.

Then a few days later, visiting San Diego, I heard a speech by Chip Conley, who is, among other things, a board member of the Burning Man Project. That’s right, the annual later-summer tribal party in the Black Rock Desert outback of northern Nevada, where about 50,000 artists and revelers unite amid throbbing music, body paint and an ignited effigy or two. Not only does Burning Man have a board of directors, those directors have business cards, and on the back of the business cards are  10 guiding principles. Conley gave me a card, and I stuffed it in my pocket.

So now I’m back from the road with one list (printed on orange paper) to my right, and another (printed on blue paper) to my left. This is a nice reminder that travel will mess with your mind as thoroughly as any drug or management-training program. It also shows that human beings love lists, and the number 10, and making plans for other people, whether we’re moving merchandise in a suburban big box or dancing naked in the desert.

But surely, it’s easy to tell Burning Man’s principles from Wal-Mart’s rules, right?

Not so much. I’ve combined the two lists into one, alphabetically ordered. Go ahead. Sort these out.

— Appreciate.

— Celebrate.

— Civic responsibility.

— Commit.

— Communal effort.

— Communicate.

— Control.

— Decommodification.

— Exceed.

— Gifting.

— Immediacy.

— Leaving no trace.

— Listen.

— Motivate.

— Participation.

— Radical inclusion.

— Radical self-expression.

— Radical self-reliance.

— Swim (upstream).

Ok, so a few were easy — “control” and “decommodification,” especially. And you can eventually figure it out, because one organization prefers verbs and the other likes nouns. (By the way, Burning Man was born in the late 1980s, when Wal-Mart was in its third decade. Sam Walton died in 1992.)

Here’s a little more on Burning Man’s principles, and here’s a little more on Walton’s rules.

We can agree, I think, that nobody playing at Burning Man and nobody working at Wal-Mart lives up to all of these ambitions every day. But, hey, it’s good to have goals. Maybe some district manager out there will adopt all 20 here and create the grooviest big box ever.

(via When Wal-Mart meets Burning Man – latimes.com)