A Story through Big Data: Can Burning Man and Transformational Festivals Change the World?
Recently, my attention has been captured by Dustin Moskovitz’s post on Burning Man regarding the ongoing debate about wealth and tech presence at the event. I personally studied this phenomenon and I particularly appreciated seeing “the 1%” point of view finally written in first person. As reality is far more complex than what appears in the media about Burning Man, Dustin’s story too is far more interesting.
And this complexity is why I conducted research about it with my team at Trybes Agency: Blaze of Inspiration. The Impact of Festivals ‘from another planet’ on our society, backed by social big data.
I stumbled upon this path two years ago, following the seeds of disruption and transformation across the world.
From the ancient rituals of Italy to the great innovation catalyzer, San Francisco. To passing by (and getting lost in) Californian deserts then finding new ways of radical expression and intentional communities all over Europe, Australia and Latin America — this is how I met hundreds of people and heard thousands of stories, each of which guided me to many others. Just following the natural path of them was — at the least — overwhelming. If not, rather, life-changing.
At some point I realized there were patterns and evident threads of meaning within this net of stories. I identified a research field: a conceptual ecosystem that is somehow affecting the society the stories stemmed from — maybe because it sums up and makes the “transformative elements” found in the stories happen through and across big gatherings of people.
I had doubts, of course. I asked myself many times, “What is this Burning Man all about?”, “Are these festivals not all just for a bunch of hippies?” and, “Is there need for academic research on this trendy and now even mainstream utopia?”
So we (Martina Faralli, psychologist and partner at Trybes Agency data analysis agency and I) run a topics analysis (analysis of topics) on quantitative and qualitative data about the Burning Man and the ecosystem of transformational festivals by trying to track down the signals previously individuated in the path of stories.
The Research question at that point was: What is the impact of Burning Man and transformational festivals in the society? More specifically, we picked up Kei Leung’s questions, to return a big data’s in-depth analysis that could add insights to the thorough work started by Leung in the field:
What do transformational festivals have to offer in these times of such intense change, both in terms of resiliency and pragmatic approaches? What is brewing in these transformational festivals that is the antidote that speaks so deeply to what is missing in modern materialist urban societies?
Why did we choose the topics method link? To track significant and recurrent themes in the field of transformational festivals, to have an analytic overview on the conceptual ecosystem and to respond to the research questions by making complexity accessible. So, again, we aimed to go beyond the gossip and actually evaluate the real impact of experiences such as those of Burning Man on a personal level and within society: stories of change are never flat, there’s not a black and white angle to them.
I personally browsed through around 500 online crowds, (conversation territories, topic groups, wispy communities, web tribes etc.) and then narrowed them down to about 200 crowds constituting the Burning Man and the ecosystem of transformational festivals.
We’ve tracked more than 2 million posts, around 74 million words and over 1 billion interactions in this in-depth analysis on big data. Additionally, we’ve analyzed different kinds of qualitative data sources and materials: journalistic and academic sources, open source and co-created content, autobiographical sources, papers and interviews (both published and unpublished). We generated and evaluated the first word cloud in the field: a qualitative analysis of big data regarding multiple crowds’ conversations.
We drew an Ecosystem of crowds map (summing up the structure of communities, groups, tribes, influencers, brands, organizations, events, official and unofficial channels that constitute the ecosystem of Burning Man and transformational festivals).
We took Burning Man as a transformational festival prototype and we created a Burning Man space & time map, visualizing which elements generated the event mass phenomenon across space and time. It was certainly a story to be told, beyond the branding and official corporate voice and digging into a vast and complex amount of original sources and unearthed voices.
During our topics analysis, themes emerged that, for relevance of the subject, quantity of material and distinctiveness in respect to other topics were regarded as liable to have a dedicated focus: “A focus on the tribe of Burners. Who are the citizens of Black Rock City?” and “Black Rock City or Silicon Valley? Technology and innovation at Burning Man”.
So, what were the findings and conclusions?
The answer to our main research question seemed to be multifaceted, allowing us to reflect on the impact of BM and transformational festivals on society from many starting points and to engage theories from scientific fields such as physics and psychology, as well as social sciences and anthropology.
The most significant evidence to find a solution to our query is found in the relationship between the Burning Man festival and the technology and innovation industries.
Given the experience of transformational festivals with all the factors involved, such as the complex system of rules and processes in an emergency state, the radical aspects, the rituals involved (among all, the role of music and rhythm rituals), the community social structure and tribalism, the freedom of self-expression through art and creativity, the networked state of the actors, the nomadic approach to off-the-grid realities and the importance of the ecosystem for the change, proved to truly transform the audience. It seems that the spreadability of this kind of change is facilitated by the audience itself when it features players in innovation within real society.
The seeds of innovation evaluated in the topics analysis, from their very origin to the most recent applications, create an impact on society if placed in the hands of the very people that are designing and shaping the world of the future.
As things stand, if Burning Man and the ecosystem of transformational festivals are a new reality-design sample, then the very experience of such an experiment results in being transformative to the field. This example could be implemented by whoever is shaping the world and reality and could work within industries of technology and innovation.
Nonetheless, the participated nature of such an experience defines the possible role of all humans as collaborative and interconnected performers of the future, instead of suffering change and/or structures that are ruling their world as it is. The bottom-up design and the co-creation of reality, so far guaranteed in TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zones), gives people (across different social layers represented) the potential to reshape their own realities and design an alternative power structure. The consumption of reality (and so the rules set and design of it) becomes prosumption of reality in the ecosystem of transformational festivals, making them experienced visions for a change that is needed in society.
Reality itself, or “the default world” as Burners would define it, challenges the TAZs with significant issues such as respect of diversity and real radical inclusion (this is not to be confused with the self-expression of the few). Experimenting on a small scale, in an innovative and co-designed ecosystem, could bring meaningful and much needed insights to the social sustainability of the future.
Additionally, when it comes to current relevance, in Burning Man we found a metaphor of the new gigantic data-based powers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter: they’re all content hubs that collect reality and facilitate connections. These hubs are user-generated realities, often perceived by the users as the authentic reality and not as a mean/collector of the reality the users are in first person design. Burning Man and transformational festivals consist not in the (official) branding or the organizations, but in the user’s creation of meaning. The very people who understand this potential, and use it wisely for a sustainable future, have the power and the achievability of creating a sustainable future. Since Burning Man is not a place to come and get entertained/changed, as users make the entertainment/transformation, internet users should not reduce their experience to a mere consumption of apps/structures. They should instead design their realities inside the apps/structures, perceiving them as mean and not as meaning of reality.
Furthermore, and also on the matter of designing reality, Kei Leung’s questions find their answers in the topics analysis. Specifically, we individuated a form of design that could be exported into the real fields of society. This design may be taken as a whole or by choosing some processes, with the purpose of solving real issues and answering real needs within current society.
We found that the potential impact of the ecosystems of transformational festivals when taken as a model could be relevant in many aspects of nowadays society, with the co-creation of meanings and values as an important leitmotif.
The processes regarding ecosystems of transformational festivals could be embraced and implemented by the following fields in the processes indicated within the topics analysis: business fields, online and social networks of all kinds, cultural fields (particularly pop culture), marketing, religions and cults, social fields, art and creativity, experience design, education and psychology, entertainment and events, city design, nature/environment, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, travel and leisure industries and medical sciences. To find out how we can apply Burning Man and the ecosystems of transformational processes in the aforementioned fields, download the full research at: Blaze of Inspiration. The Impact of Festivals ‘from another planet’ on our society, backed by social big data.
To wrap up…
I myself experienced many visions for change, and I just want to thank all the people that have been part of this life-changing path of stories: those who introduced me to their friends and their friends of friends (among all: Neal Gorenflo, who we started the conversation with), those who made me experience the greatest values (such as Irene Clash’s “music is the answer”, which ended up being one of the biggest research findings) and all the inspirational people that I met on my path (still amazed by co-founder John Law’s early Burning Man story as much as his — still — incredibly disruptive and un-commodified vision of innovation).
I want to dedicate this work to all the people who, while radically self-expressing, imagine and design a different world. The world is dotted by crowds that challenge the current society’s status quo (my favourite is Tropicantesimo) and the ecosystem for a change is an on-going, ever-changing and almost unmanageable map that, no matter what, is always going to disrupt the default world.
