Burning Man: Our Own Theme Camp

One of the things I had marked as having room for improvement post-Burning Man last year about my experience was my camp situation. We ended up camped on the perimeter of a camp of people where we only knew a couple of folks. There was no common theme to bring people together, and towards the end – there was way too many planning hassles for a camp that was supposed to be low-key.

And then, most of the people I personally knew ended up camped fairly far away.. making getting together rather sporadic. In essence, I craved more of a community feel and connection.

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Around mid-May, approached me with the idea of putting together a theme camp for nomads. It sounded great, and off we went to figure out how to get placed. We had some folks sign on pretty early, but then a few weeks before Burning Man, it seemed we had dwindled down to just 6. And then, the camp got reinfused with interest and we ended up with about 25.

And amazingly, a good number of the folks I already knew from various facets of my life – even without me even trying. Someone we had met at PreHeat, someone we met at Florida Poly Retreat, who we met at Singularity Summit last year (and is also in our CA social network), the creators of our favorite energy drink – SmartPower, and someone who I didn’t know previously who actually lived *3* miles from me in Melbourne, FL. The camp also had many others, who had various ties to each other already, and many that have now been formed.

Our campmates came from such a diverse sets of backgrounds – from many geographic locations, many age ranges, many professional backgrounds and many levels of Burning Man experience. It was awesome to have folks around to go adventuring with in groups. Chris and I spent a lot of time in particular roaming with , which was completely fabulous.

Also, having a placed camp with an address – people knew where to find us. This had the benefit that lots of people came to see us. It also had the draw back that lots of people came to see us (which was actually, great).

We hosted 3 different ‘Nomadic Happy Hours’ which drew in a lot of nomadic minded folks for socializing and sharing of stories. It was amazing, and many contacts formed. There seems to be interest in our vision of a nomadic community with convergences across the world.

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I loved my Burning Man camp this year. The camp and campmates we brought together were awesome. And while we put the intentions on everyone being self-sufficient, the community sharing that went on was amazing. Being part of Camp Nomadia was definitely a highlight of my burn this year. And organizing a Burning Man camp with no infrastructure is a heck of a lot easier than organizing a weekend long retreat!