Center Camp is 671 miles away

This year, I'm camping with a new Burning Man camp. Our infrastructure is solid, dude. It's a Seattle-based camp and it is 671 miles away from Center Camp, somewhere at like 3:15 and zzzzzzz. In other words, I'm staying in the Default World this year but that doesn't mean that I'm not "Going to Burning Man." For me, Burning Man is a dusty place full of some of my favorite people, amazing art  and many evenings of dancing, stars, and laughter. It is also a state of mind that this year I will cultivate in the Default World. So, I'm doing (almost) all of the things that I would do to get ready for Burning Man: new costumes, gifts, prepping food, prepping to be off the grid for 10 days, planning to see art and planning to let the moments take me where they may.

This year, instead of waking up at dawn, dressing in white and riding my bike to the temple to meditate, I'll wake at dawn, dress in white, take a ferry to Whidbey Island, and ride my bike to the Earth Sanctuary to meditate. Instead of riding my bike out to deep playa to look at art, I'll bus and bike downtown to SAM and the sculpture park to look at art. Instead of taking a day to set up my hexayurt, my temporary home for the week, I'll take a day to prep the garden for next spring's veggie seeds. Saturday night, instead of joining the 60,000 other citizens of Black Rock City to watch The Man burn, I'll join a couple dozen friends at Golden Gardens to watch [something yet to be determined] burn.

I'll disconnect from Facebook, twitter, email...I'll use the phone to make plans to see friends. Or maybe I'll just head out on my bike and see who I run into. I'll make music, I'll go to a couple parties, I'll meditate and write A LOT. I will imagine what my ideal world looks like and live it for a week, try it on for size and see what I can bring home from the playa with me.

Wendy 3.0: 5 year retrospective

16 August 2014 marks the 5th anniversary of the Wendy 3.0 system. As we prep for the anniversary, I  want to celebrate the progress made in the system and do a post mortem on what has gone well and what could go better, and what the future looks like for future releases of Wendy 3.0.

First off, what has gone well.

1. The spec It has required little change as it set out a broad range of features to be developed, deleted and merged. It's the spec of a lifetime of evolution, it sets a good north star for our long range plan (LRP). 
2. The development process Has been steady and made great progress. 
3. Beta testing The testing process surfaced considerable issues with the system. Some issues were so extensive, we had to take some aspects of the system offline to address the issues. Unexpectedly, by taking those aspects offline, we discovered features and strengths in the system that we had not anticipated. Overall, beta testing has been an excellent feedback loop in maintaining and evolving the system.

What could have gone better?

Since this was our first attempt at such a systemic overhaul, we think things have gone pretty damn well. We have no regrets and will continue to execute on future issues with the same methods, openness and trust that we've developed the last 5 years.

What does the future look like?

The future is so bright, we'll need to wear shades. Seriously though, we envision a lifetime of evolution, continued agile annual releases and many new challenges and opportunities.

While I've done most of the work, it would not have been possible without all of the beta testers, sysadmins, PMs, developers, designers and other systems/applications that the Wendy 3.0 system interacts with and relies on. Thank you so much for your data, your cycles, your energy and your feedback.