Last year’s census was a huge success and we are looking forward to another incredible year! We want to thank everyone who has volunteered in the past for the census. Thank you for all your hard work and support! The census is so lucky to have amazing volunteers like you! All of your efforts are very much appreciated and are so important to the census and to Burning Man!
We are currently seeking volunteers for a variety of activities for the 2013 Black Rock City Census, on and off playa.
Some of the jobs we need help with are as follows:
- Coordinators: serious work with the team doing pre-event planning (e.g. planning and executing the keypunch, designing sampling procedures, managing volunteers, etc.)
- Census Display Designers/Builders: artistic people needed to design the display (graphs from last year’s census and template will be provided), the census form layout, signs made, (we already have a logo!)
- Sampler Shift Leads: leading the random sample (coming pre-event, receiving special training, sampling daily at the Gate during ingress, and then being a sampler shift lead once or twice during the week)
- Sampler Volunteers: sampling shifts involve going to the Gate in a big team and asking people in their cars to participate
- Keypunchers – on-playa at the Census Lab entering the data from the Gate sample
- Census Lab – setup, decorating, paper-mache the office, greeting people, explaining the Decompressing Survey, cleaning up throughout the week, and striking the Lab at the end of the week
If any of these positions sound like fun and you would like to volunteer for the Black Rock City Census this year, please contact Indiana at stevencrane@burningman.com.
Thanks and can’t wait to see all you beautiful people on the playa!
Black Rock City Census 
It would be really interesting if you continued to survey people on their industry/profession. It seems like most of the people I have met/encountered are in IT and I would love to gage how much of an increase has occurred over the years.
the question about spending in Nevada is not complete, the problem with the question is that it is not specific for Nevada residents, how much did or will you spend in Nevada, it needs to be specific either as related to your Burning Man trip or all spending for the remainder of the year in Nevada, which would include say Christmas holiday spending.
Would be nice to show the number of people responding in each category. E.g., is the census question/answer based upon 1,000, 10,000, 30,000 people?
It’d be good to see the incidents, accidents and crime stats collated across time.
That would be interesting, great idea. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Census is waaaaay too long.
Sorry you feel this way. It is long, but all the information we collect is so important for the org and interesting to hear about.
It would be a good idea to have volunteers along the exodus late at night when it takes 6-8 hours to get out to wake people up who have fallen asleep at the wheel, to inform of shutting off lights and radios so not to get dead batteries and shutting down vehicles to save gas & not fumigate the rest of us. That was a huge problem this year and really messes up the lines. They would also be able to radio a tow truck in the case of a dead battery or running out of gas. (There were many people who had dead batteries walking through the busy traffic lines asking for jumper cables).
Also a few places to pull off the exit line to be able to rest/sleep would be good.
If I may, i’d like to make this comment: Never before have I encountered so much misogamy and sexism at BM. I was utterly surprised to hear people proudly say that there camp only accepts “girls who show their tits”, or hear another person refer to a person (female) as “baby girl”. Maybe i haven’t been getting out enough, but i was surprised at what i found.
It may just depend on the camps you visit and people you happen to be around and interact with. Definitely don’t feel that this population of people have that heavy a presence or that it reflects upon or represents the burner community as a whole.
I agree with brccensus. However, with 40% of the Burners being virgins, maybe these newbies need some direction. I never felt the sexism you describe. That is so unfortunate.
I don’t remember seeing a question about age on the 2013 census?
It is on the online form this year. Participate at census.burningman.com 🙂
To be specific, we ask you for the year of your birth so you may not have noticed. If you go to http://census.burningman.com, it is one of the first questions in the survey. Thanks for filling it out!
no button for if you left and came back
Please post ALL of the tabulated answers to the census, not just a selected few. Thank you!