Mosaic Experiment 2013 Retreat Afterburn Report

Freezing Greetings, my burner friends! I’m very excited to report that last year’s Mosaic organizers recently met up for a winter retreat to discuss all the things that went right and wrong at our inaugural epic 2013 event, and all the ways in which Mosaic could evolve and improve. I’m not joking when I say: we literally went to a “cabin in the woods,” confined over 15 of us in that tiny space for 2 days and worked our asses off trying to figure out how to make Mosaic more radically participatory and radically responsible for 2014!

We already have a date and location confirmed, so mark your calendars and start saving your gas money!

Date: October 2 - 5, 2014, first Thursday through Sunday weekend of October, consistently the same as last year.

Location: RECLAIM, of course! Did you have any doubts?? Same place as last year in Rutland, OH. Joe and his family love seeing the artistic participation of our community and expressedly appreciated our LEAVE NO TRACE efforts!

As for the specific ticket price, ticket cap, and the go-live selling date, those are coming soon! We promise no big surprises on the price point, but based on last year’s sales, we emphatically urge you all buy your tickets as soon as we make them available as we are expecting to sell out before the event. Yes, you read that right! Our inaugural burn was 2/3rds sold out having only been announced 60 days prior...how do you think it will go this year? That’s right...if you wish to be at Mosaic 2014, you’d better buy early.

After Mosaic 2013, each team lead submitted what we call an “afterburn report” which asks: what worked, what didn’t, and what needs improvement? From this data we created several new team lead roles which we identified as imperative to the success of Mosaic 2014, and are now writing those job descriptions and expectations. Once finished, we’ll be asking you to step up and fill them!

As for our existing roles? We’re already doing succession planning and hoping to mentor a few of you to take our jobs within the next couple years. It is just as much a joy to organize these events as it is to attend them, but just as new participants evolve burns, they also evolve organizations and help them grow. In lieu of this, we will soon be posting our OWN job descriptions and if any of them appeal to you, PLEASE contact us and feel free to help in that role however you can. If you’re feeling inclined and motivated right now, shadow us before or during the event! We all need to gift these opportunities to others, so which of you will take them? Which of our teams intrigue you the most??

We brainstormed many ways we could improve and optimize our existing event infrastructure: gate entry, parking, fire and safety, shift changes, and team lead communication during the event, and agreed to implement several improvements to our internal communications process prior to the event.

We made an organizational chart & reporting hierarchy; out of this we found ourselves reorganizing several departments resulting in the creation of new team lead positions we need you to fill! We’re just a couple weeks from posting those roles because we want to ensure we properly communicate their expectations. No one should be taking a job without knowing what they’re expected to do and when they’re expected to do it!

You want to see more art at Mosaic? We agree! By consensus we voted to organizationally offer art grants this year! We discussed several ways in which this can happen, and reached a consensus that it should be a separate department from the organizational leads. The who, what, when, where, how, and why’s of this will be reported to you shortly, but we wanted you to at least know we agreed to make funding available for Mosaic art projects this year!

That’s all for now, gang, but we’ve got a very busy year ahead of us and lots more information to share in the upcoming weeks. If you’d like more information about our retreat or our event’s financial details, feel free to skim our meeting minutes…. but BE WARNED -- they were written by exhausted community volunteers stuck in a concealed space in the middle of nowhere for days! Oh wait….isn’t that a burn??? Here are the retreat’s meeting minutes: http://tinyurl.com/mosaicretreat2013

Can't wait for our next info update? Please address any immediate questions to info@mosaicexperiment.com

Or talk to our community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MosaicExperiment/