Maybe the Site Liaisons can remind us what legal conditions change when we go over a certain number of people? I thought if we go over 1000 people there are significant additional things we have to do/pay for?

I remember vaguely Holger mentioning insurance, but I can't remember specifically what he said. I think it was that once you went over 1000 people, the price went up and not on a per capita basis? Could be wrong.

Freiland gave us some numbers for their permit application in 2020 (1300 attendants planned). In terms of requirements most numbers stayed the same (security, medical service) – apart from more sanitary facilities (25 toilets, 10 Urinals – in 2021 we had ca. 20). With 1500 attendants, numbers can be higher and we'll have to check with the Amt...

It's not a huge jump if I recall correctly. It's more gradual than that. We were paying first aid for up to 1500 people easily. Security I don't think changes much at that level, toilets goes up gradually. Insurance jumps up a bit, but it's probably not that big a factor to consider. To make it financially worthwhile it would be better to jump 20% than 10% I expect though.

I think it's more quality and variety that needs to be addressed here, espeically if there were LNT issues last year.
My experience is that up to 1500-2000 is the point where it's difficult to find people again and some people prefer more intimate burns than larger.
20% seems to be a good target though.
Another thought - what was the actual attendence last year? As in, if 1000 memberships were sold, how many actually checked in?

Also - I was just looking at the census - it doesn't seem to have been a very representative sample - hoe many people responded?

199 participants have answered the census.

I'm curious as to what data you are basing this statement on? How can anyone know what is truly representative without actually doing the census (study) in the first place?

I mean we all have our gut feelings and anecdotal experiences, I certainly have mine. But that's why we have data and science, is to overcome the limitations of such methodologies of assumed truth.

The amount of times 2.6 or 5.4, 7.8 and 10.6 show up in the first few graphs. There seemed to be a pattern there. Also, the fact that it was never mentioned how many people the census was based on.
It also seemed that only one person outside of the 25-45 age range attended.

Technically speaking, a sample size of 200 for a population of 1000 is not too bad in terms confidence interval and margin of error. 👏🏻

A way to do this is to ask a few demographic questions during the ticket sale that everyone has to answer, then skew the survey using that. Even better do a random selection at gate and adjust using that.

199 self-selected people is hardly representative of anything.

200 random people out of 1000 yes, self-selected not so much.

Fair point…. or at least one can not be sure statistically that it is representative. It can be representative though.

I wrote it very clearly in the presentation (link: https://create.piktochart.com/output/56560265-kiez-burn-census-2021-copy)

IDK how I can prevent people from not reading thoroughly. Not at all I guess. But would have saved this discussion here. ;)

TO SUMMARIZE:
199 participants and the census is NOT representative, as it is self-selected and biased. But it is as close as we can get unless we make mandatory surveys or invest a whole lot more time to randomize participants and set up a design.

I was also considering an on-site survey one of the days. Just to add a bit of intoxication to the mix and make it more useless. :*


Anyways, Please read the second slide. Here is a screenshot for your convenience:

My main concern is space availability, since the overall size of the site was cut by roughly 1/3 last year. "Luckily" the site being more and more dry, this has made more space available to compensate for this.
- As Site Planning realiser in 2021, with around 750 people being part of camps in 2021, it was a real Tetris challenge to fit everyone on the site, and really time consuming to find an appropriate spot for each camp ( this could be mitigated with a less hands on approach, which could however mean more conflicts of territory)
- "Freiland gave us some numbers for their permit application in 2020 (1300 attendants planned)"
The change in the layout of the site happened in 2021 however, do we know how that impacted their numbers and how they are seeing their limit capacity in the future?
Taking into account that their setup is different from ours, camps taking more space than the classic festival setup (with all camping in one spot, and activities on other ones, anyone who went to their event last year can correct me if I'm wrong).

Another point, last year we had 34% new burners, and have seen with it some concerns regarding our principles and their use.
Growing further could likely make these problems stronger.

Taking this year to focus on growing as a community (quality) rather than growing the community (quantity) seems more important from my perspective.
If the consensus is that both are manageable in a healthy way for all involved, why not, I'm just not convinced of it personally 🙂

Thanks, dear Clément, I was really looking forward to your input from site planning.

Terrain: It was also my idea that many areas of the site were not appropriate for campers given the hills, ups, and downs in the terrain. Definitely a must to consider.

New Burners: I also worried about it. On the other hand, I trust that with a different tickets sales approach things will go different enabling more balance in this regard. But of course, that will be an experiment...it could all go in a different direction of what we think it will.

Freiland capacity cap: That is a very good point!, the 1300 participants cap was before they changed the layout making part of the Geläande unavailable. Maybe we need an update there @Kate or Annete, or Jan could possibly check on that?

Layout: after having made the layout and seeing all camps and installations on-site, would you say Clément, things could have been arranged differently to have more space/ better distribution? asking this because I know how different things look like once the Kieze are all settled up onsite. Maybe there were areas that could have been used differently to fit more camps or installations confortaby? What was your impression?

Overall, with the general feedback I slowly tend to think of going for no growth or, maybe 10%, and perhaps rely on a higher ticket price to have more liquidity for art, without compromising the layout.

A small note: Freiland has, as mentioned, no camps. Also people don't camp within the Festival area, but on top of each other in what it was our Parking and Monkeys Areal.

A bit late to answer this sorry.
Honestly in terms of layout, I did the best I could, and it was a tight fit. Going around the site during the event, people were camping in the oddest places, that were not even planned as camping initially but had to because of lack of space.
I am seriously concerned that growing in numbers will make having a nice layout a real challenge, or force people to sleep on the parking field, which seems to have been less than comfortable from the (albeit few) feedbacks I got of it.

If you think this proposal will be unviable please speak now. My interpretation from the given input is that generally, 1200 participants wouldn't mean a big risk and that a less hands-on approach would perhaps enable more space letting people find their spots plus the space being drier, im not sure i have interpreted correctly, could you please rephrase? thanks

As I've said before I see no evidence that new people are more or less "burnery", "moopy" or "poopy" than repeat offenders. I will continue to believe this until I see actual numbers. Anecdotally I've seen people shine and get it the first time they get exposed to it, and met people who keep coming without getting it.

I am also not afraid of a "bad time" with little art, little participation, or whatever subjective metric that often is applied to this question. Bad trips have lessons to teach, and I am confident that people would come to such an event, feel the pure potential of it, and bring back more s)#t next year.

My recommendation would be to increase to as many tickets as possible while still being considered reasonably safe by all leads that are concerned with such matters (speaking for ticketing, any number is safe). Perhaps, I will concede, those tickets should be biased against single free-campers. (That's my prejudice against free-campers speaking, I imagine them as two dudes from Düsseldorf that's just discovered smoking weed. Start a camp already!)

"My recommendation would be to increase to as many tickets as possible while still being considered reasonably safe" agree, that is the big question...

what that safe number would be? 🤓

That's for rangers, toilets, and so on to answer. My guess is that it's bounded by how many people freiland will let us have on site anyway.

I personally do not wish to increase the population, at least not in a year where planning yet again starts off in February.

But that's based on my personal preferences. I prefer events with 500-1000 people, am okay with events 1000-2000 people and usually do not attend events with more people than that in general.

I could bring some arguments, but I'd only be mirroring the concerns mentioned by @Cairn (Clément) and others.


But you do you, I am not realizing anything this year and won't have to deal with the fallout of the decision so much. :)

I very much resonate with @Cairn (Clément) s statement about growing in quality rather than quantity. I still vote for growth, but slow. going up to 1100-1200 people max. to me feels doable. it would mean all areas can adapt to more people but (hopefully) without being overwhelmed. IF, of course, this makes sense financially and doesn't just mean spending more money on infrastructure.

Just from gate perspective: last year was busy and stressful at times but worked out in the end (besides the fact that many gate&greeting volunteers didn't show up for their shifts). If monkeys were to do gate again, i think we could manage 100-200 more people and still improve gate/greeting. Suddenly adding 50% or more people would require a much bigger "jump" (f.e. introducing a scanning system for tickets, find more space for better queuing, more space for a bigger greeting area, MORE reliable volunteers, a waiting area that is not the monkey camp kitchen, etc. etc.) also considering we might have to do covid testing again (who knows!). It feels too much in a year where a lot is still uncertain.

Let's focus on improving what we started last year.

Thanks all, I have updated this thread and lowered it down to 10% growth. I leave this discussion open until 7.02.2022 and just then I will make a final poll which will be online for 5 days ( 12.02.2022 ). With this decision in place, tickets can move forward as well as the Korg having some certainly around the size of the event by the date of their next meeting (17.02.22).

Thanks @Veroca R. Sala 👏 We'll check in with the site owners once more about the actual size of the venue this year, if there will be any changes that can potentially affect the number of attendants... I opened a new thread dealing with frequently (un)answered questions for Freiland!

So, the "hard limit" is 1500. However, we should remember that Freiland has a completely different setup...

Not so much concerned about a lot of new people, but more concerned about the lack of camping space as well....

Has the layout been addressed by anyone yet? Is it clear from Freiland's side how much space we can use? Can't find anything in this thread.

The same space as last year. The rest of the Gelände is "natural reserve"

@Kris: For @Cairn (Clément) the layout was a really tricky Tetris task. Last year it turned out that we were only allowed to use 2/3 of the previous terrain. The reason that there was so much "additional" space was that some "more dry" areas for camping have been added (i.e. parking lot & behind Underworld there used to be a swamp – last year we could put tents there for the first time without sinking in and becoming even dirtier hippies). If we sell more tickets, this would very likely affect the ratio of free campers and camps: more free campers squeezing in at some road and certainly not more space for camps. @Jan Thomas has chatted with Freiland and nothing will change in the site plan as it stands today :(

Thanks @Veroca R. Sala for bringing this up – it was great to share about it again and hear everyone's perspective! Where do we go from here?

Damn it, I missed the poll by 10 minutes. Personally, I would say 👎🏻 to adding more people considering the numerous challenges we already face.