talk.kiezburn.org

2021 Dreams Review - Post Mortem

D Diarmaid Public Seen by 45

A thread to discuss the dreams review process, and the decisions that have been made on the dreams granting process.

This year, dreamers were not allowed to spend all of their tokens on a single dream - there was a maximum setting of 3 tokens per person, which was changed to 5 at the the last minute in order to accomadate big dream budget, which would have been difficult/impossible to fund otherwise. Was this the right decision and how could it have been improved?

The LNT grant was not very well explained. What are the criteria behind this grant and how should it be applied? Surely every responsable burner will already leave no trace, so does this apply to everyone?

Only allowing transport of 20% didn't work out well. How should we change this to work better? There was a note in the dreamers manual if all they were looking for was transport costs, then this was allowed. .

Should we provide extra tickets to children? So that they can vote for dreams as they want to, as opposed to sharing it with thier parents.

Communication was a mess - how should we communicate with dreamers?

Misunderstanding with tickets - getting your dream funded does not guareentee a ticket, it just gives allows you to apply for one.

VRS

Veroca R. Sala Sat 26 Jun 2021 12:02AM

Adding here comments scattered in other threads. Talk doesn't allow move comments within the same groups but to different groups.

Documenting x the future

VRS

Veroca R. Sala Sat 26 Jun 2021 12:03AM

Oh you added it already. Thanks!

R

Roko Sat 26 Jun 2021 10:28AM

"there was a maximum setting of 3 tokens per person, which was changed to 5 at the the last minute in order to accomadate big dream budget,"
this actually f*cked us good. we were super suprised by this condition of needing over 300 people to vote 3 times on a dream to fund 900 euro. so we set our goal at 555 to at least get some money for our dream. (no this is not enough for what we plan). and then over night it's suddenly 5 tokens per dream? unfair. also impossible to predict how many people will actually vote in this new system (heard we have like 500 freecampers?)

suggest to have this open again and let everyone decide where to spent their tokens 100% unrestricted.

CY

CJ Yetman Sun 27 Jun 2021 7:25AM

My understanding of the LNT grant was to encourage dreamers to recycle/upcycle things for their dreams. While I think that's a great initiative...
1. calling it an LNT (Leave no trace) grant is very confusing because LNT is a core principle of the event and everyone is expected to follow it, so suggesting that you get a special grant for doing/committing to it suggests that it is ok if you don't do it, which is totally false
2. recycling/upcycling things often is very cheap or even free, which suggests that if a dreamer were really doing this well, they wouldn't need a dreams grant because all of their materials would be free/cheap
3. the criteria "Artists who can prove their Dream will Leave No Trace" is a bit absurd

In the future, I think this should be removed.

CY

CJ Yetman Sun 27 Jun 2021 7:42AM

The rules state "We unfortunately cannot fund big sound stages" and "Sorry, but No: Sound system", yet this year there are at least two dreams that blatantly include a sound system in their dream, and at least a couple others that are clearly "big sound stages" but have avoided putting sound systems on their material list presumably to make their dream comply with the rules. We gotta get real about these rules... if they're ignored haphazardly then people will get the impression that none of the rules really matter and it's merely the whim of the dream guides, which sets everyone up for a bunch of chaos and conflict.

CY

CJ Yetman Sun 27 Jun 2021 7:43AM

copying over here because it's more relevant for the post mortem/next year:

In the original formulation of the Dreams rules, the decision was to not allow "consumables". I get that some "consumables" might seem nicer on the surface than others, but if we allow buying ingredients for pizza, it's rather hard not to accept buying ingredients to make cocktails, and so on.

Dreamers Manual says "It’s a “No” - without exceptions: Consumables (Food, Alcohol, Drugs, etc.) "

S

Saskia Sun 27 Jun 2021 8:58AM

I came late to the game this year, but as my original documents got used and changed I have a pretty good overview what the dream orga did this year before I joined as guide.

After one year leading dreams, and four years of being somewhat involved in the supporting artists and Kieze to enrich the event, I'd subsidize that, for dreams, we should think about the impact that our decentralized approach has. I do think in the context of dreams, realizers who do dream guiding need more support and backup and structure from main KORG.

It is an unfortunate reality that once money is involved, it is almost impossible not to piss someone off. Currently, the people who take care of dreams are faced with a shitload of justified and unjustified frustration.

The distribution of funds - but especially the creation of the guidelines used to distribute the money - needs to be in the hand of a group of dedicated people (incl. core- KORG) who got each others' back and can help explain the decisions that have been made that are criticised.

There needs to be a common understanding a) what the guidelines mean exactly and b) how the guidelines came to be.

And while individuals may disagree on details, there needs to be general satisfaction with the rules that have been made.

Because it is hard to defend rules and guidelines that you do not agree with. I.e. for me personally it is extremely hard to defend the 'no soundsystem' or 'no funding of kieze public area' rules because I simply do not align with the idea, that music and great sound stages are no art. In fact, I think the underworld stage 2019 was the most burner-artsy-big-thingy KB has ever seen.... But I do know that not everybody agrees with me here.

Some specific things I'd add to the post mortem as possible steps to work on the issues I have seen this year and in the past years:

  • People who take up the task as Dream Guides after the orga has been done and the rulebook has been written should agree to do the task in accordance to the rules already formulated. This doesn't mean that no valid criticism should be brought up. But a rangers volunteer would not enter the ranger tent at the day of the event, go through the rule book and start criticising many decision made before, blocking the whole ranger-task. And if they did, I do hope ranger lead would show them the finger and then the door. Don't become a dream guide if you do not like the rules. And if you are dream guide org, do not let someone who just came in bulldoze all over your decisions.

  • DEFINITIONS. Precise definitions. And collect them somewhere. What is a consumeable and what is not? What is a PA? Does 'no sound system' also mean 'no light system'? Just a little example: consumeables was used to refer to edible or digestible things (food, drink, drugs). Not everything that 'goes empty' after using it at some point. But during discussions, it became clear, that the idea of 'what is a consumeable' got somewhat lost.

  • DOCUMENT DECISIONS. Especially when they happen in the Telegram chat. Have a dedicated protocol person for that, if need be for a telegram chat

  • If you do not have a clear, defendeable and easy-to-explain rule for something, do not have the rule (this whole LNT+ thing. I simply cannot stress how much I hate the whole Leave a better trace BS that started 2019.)

  • Provide emotional and intellectual support when people come at you for rules, because they do get nasty sometimes. Dream-guiding and fund-distribution have reliably burned out every person who led the area (me included) because people are fucking whiney aggressive crybabies. And you know how mean little children can be.

  • Think about the information your dreamer needs to make an educated planning decision. With that I mean: Providing realistic estimates of important key numbers. How many tickets? How many votes per tickets? How many votes per individual dream? I don't think that is enabling dreamers to tweak their dream so they can get funding. I think it enables dreamers to think in realistic dimensions for the size and nature of our event

V

Vlad Sun 27 Jun 2021 11:57AM

As I stirred the discussion in the first place, I will give in my two cents:

  • Rules interpretation. In my opinion and i strongly agree with CJ and Saskia the rules need to be followed, if the rules are way too fuzzy - they have to be either formulated clearly or be abandond completely. There are currently several confliction rules, at least two on sounds.

  • Critical decision documentation and communication. Decisions need to be documents and for important things needs to be done in the same way the dog decision process is being made, this is especially important for financially based decisions (like setting up what can and cannot be financed and maximum projects size aka token distribution algorithm).

  • Public decisions for the public system. Dream platform is a vote based fund distribution system (participants of the event give the votes for projects they like and hope to see those projects by the event). Does it make sense to make a poll based system and than set up dozen of rules trying to limit what ppln can actually vote for? Does it make sense to define these limitations by polling for them as well (for instance we can ask ticket holders in ticket formular what token limit do they prefer explaining that smaller limit will create more smaller projects and will make it impossible to fund bigger projects and vice versa).

  • "4 eye principle" was suggested for dream guides in 2019 already, i still believe this is a good idea: there is a primary dream guide responsible for a dream and a backup dream guide who seals the actions of primary with approval, it may remove any problem with rules being applied inconsistently.

  • Dream tickets. Transparency needed. There are at least 3 dreams this year which dont want any money (no popular approval will take place), but they will recieve a KB ticket basically automatically once their dream is approved by a dream guide. This is an exteremly weird and unfair situation especially for everybody on KB bazaar who is looking for a ticket right now, if tehy only knew :). This ticket distribution mechanism needs to be defined properly: in what situation and how many tickets can a dreamer get if her/his projects is approved and what does it mean for a dream to be approved by community, does getting a single 1 token vote qualifies as community approval?

  • Token distribution aka maximum possible dream budget, and why we chnaged it last minute. Number of token per dream decision - about 4 hours before voting to be started I discovered this rule in one of the documents and after a simple calcualtion I realized that at least 4-5 dreams were mathematiucally impossible to fund and about 10 were borderline cases. I contacted few of those dreams and realized that they were completely unaware of it. In my opinion it was a big problem and I addressed ppl in private and publicly to change this situation. We had a discussion in dreamer org chat and had a vote among dream guides with 5 token per project winning with a majority of 8 dream guides.




R

Roko Sun 27 Jun 2021 11:58AM

@CJ Yetman about not funding sound stages: of course camps that bring a sound system avoid to list sound systems on their dream when it’s not allowed to be funded. not because they ignore rules, but because they obey them. there is a lot of other stuff that camps with sound systems bring. i don’t think that a camp will use the money from dreams for anything else than what was indicated aka the money will be spent on what is allowed to be spent on. the invoice will proof this. when a camp decides to have a sound system, besides other gifts they will bring, to reduce them to being only a sound camp is not appropriate.

CY

CJ Yetman Mon 28 Jun 2021 1:25PM

Another form of abuse that seems to have happened this year and the prior year is Dreams whose primary purpose appears to be getting a/some directed tickets. While wanting to find a way to get a ticket to a sold out event, and committing to do some art/performance/etc. is totally understandable, that is not the intended purpose of the Dreams platform, as I understand it, and therefore this possibility opens up the door for abuse... and again, sets everyone up for a bunch of chaos and conflict. Such dreams typically take the form of a Dream that requires 0 or 1 token to be funded, guaranteeing or nearly guaranteeing that it will be "funded" and the only true requirement of the Dream is that the dreamer receives a directed ticket. Some have taken this even a step further, listing as the only funding requirement personal travel expenses to the event, which is already excluded anyway according to the rules, but seems particularly egregious when the only requirements for a dream are a directed ticket plus their travel expenses being paid.

If the Kiez Burn community wants to support and fund things like this, which may be the case, I believe we should find an alternate way of approaching such projects, because doing it through the Dreams platform puts these projects at odds with other Dreams that are following the more natural concept of a "dream".

Load More