1. What are HUBS?
2. How can you find a partner camp?
3. What do you do once you have your own HUB established?
4. HUBS Timeline
5. Important things to consider when forming a HUB
6. How Placement will map HUBS requests
7. Layout Instructions
8. How is creating a HUB different from forming a village?

1. What are HUBS?

HUBS (Humans Uniting for Better Sustainability) is a resource-sharing system first introduced in 2022 to help camps plan and share resources to support Burning Man Project’s goal to handle waste ecologically, be regenerative, and be carbon negative by 2030.

While Placement has always tried to put camps together who requested to be neighbors, HUBS gives priority to camps who are partnering to efficiently share resources such as power, water, and transportation. Rather than rely on Placement to determine your neighbors and leave resource-sharing up to chance, you can collaborate and form partnerships with other camps and include the information within your camps’ Placed Camp Questionnaires.

2. How can you find a partner camp?

1. You might have a camp or two you befriended on playa — building on those relationships can lead to the best pairings. If you had a great experience with a previous neighbor and their email address you sharpied on your arm is long washed away, email us at placement@burningman.org and we can help with re-introductions.
2. SPARK Classifieds is like Craigslist for Burners. We’ve revamped it so that anyone can post and search for things they’re looking for or offering. Playa Resources categories can be used to post about sharing resources and services like equipment, fuel, gray water, infrastructure, and medical supplies.
3. Burner Network, a new nonprofit group dedicated to supporting Black Rock City’s camps, recently completed a worldwide map showing the hometowns of 2019 BRC camps, searchable by city and state. The map is a great way to find other camps in your local area for potential resource sharing. 
4. The Camp Listing Archive is searchable by year, by camp name, by hometown, and by keyword. If the camp has submitted a public URL or email address, you can use that to contact the camp.
5. Global Regional Directory lists Regional Contacts whose role is to help local Burners connect with each other. There are contacts in almost every continent and many host happy hours where you can meet Burners near you!

3. What do you do once you have your own HUB established?

1. Fill out the Placed Camp Questionnaire! We’ve added HUBS specific questions within the Questionnaire. For 2023, to ensure your HUB can be reviewed, all camps, including support camps, should fill out the Questionnaire by March 30, 2023 at 12pm (noon) PDT.
2. Lay it out! We need a map of how camps wish to be positioned in relation to each other. You won’t be able to complete the questionnaire until you’ve uploaded your HUB layout. Don’t forget, we’ll still need to see your individual camp layout and we’ll ask for that in the questionnaire also. Read about layouts below for instructions on this.
3. We'll review! Placement will follow up to request any additional information we may need.

4. HUBS Timeline

• Thursday, March 30: Placed Camp Questionnaire due for all theme camps, support camps, and villages that wish to form a HUB by 12pm (noon) PT / 3pm ET / 8pm GMT
  • Support Camp deadline in 2023 is normally April 20, but for us to fully review and place your HUB, we require all camps within a HUB to have their questionnaire completed by March 30.

5. Important things to consider when forming a HUB

Take care in deciding who you want to form a HUB with and make sure it’s for the right reason: to share resources between camps to lower costs, create efficiencies for your camps, or to further the sustainability efforts of our temporary city.

Get to know the camps you’ve gotten along with on playa; ask what their addresses or sectors have been in the past. Is where they’ve been placed mesh with where you want to be placed? Is your interactivity complementary or will your schedules clash? Are you a loud camp and they’re a quiet camp? Does your camp have kid-friendly events while the proposed pair camp is an adult-only camp? You may have camps that you’ve requested to be neighbors with and haven’t been placed near; please remember, there may be one or more reasons that each of your camps have been given the addresses they’ve received.

6. How Placement will map HUBS requests

A lot of thought and care is taken in looking at the macro-scale of the sector itself and the micro-scale of the neighborhoods on a one-to-two block radius. The Placement team thinks about how camps of different shapes and sizes fit together, interactivity throughout the day and night in each neighborhood, and how it all flows together. Because HUBS is designed to advance environmental sustainability and more efficient use of resources, the Placement team will prioritize the placement of HUBS in our mapping process starting 2022. 

HUBS is one more factor for the Placement team to consider and may influence where your camp is placed in BRC. If your camp is used to being on Esplanade and your united camps don’t warrant the same location, your HUB may be placed in a lower profile area of the city. This can also work the other way around — you may prefer being back on H street, but your HUB’s combination of camps may warrant a Plaza, for example. Make sure to talk about these possibilities.

Keep in mind that once placement locations are announced, it is very difficult to move camps around. Moving one camp is hard, and moving multiple camps is even more difficult. Please alert Placement ASAP of any changes that occur to your HUB (such as if a camp decides to separate or an additional camp wishes to join). We will do our best to accommodate, but may not always be able to.

7. Layout Instructions

The Placement team needs to understand how the camps within each HUB are physically configured. Please submit a map that details the orientation of the camps to each other, indicate the frontage of each camp, and illustrate/label what your camps are sharing that require the configuration (such as a power grid).

We recommend your HUB fit as much as you can within a rectangular shape with 4 corners. While we will try to work with your requested shapes, we may need to modify the configuration based on available space. Most BRC blocks have a depth of ~250’. Esplanade to A is ~400’ deep and E to F is ~450’ deep. Average length of full blocks is around 1000’.

Layout Specs

• A rough, overhead view is okay.
• Include the dimensions of each of the borders of the individual camps.
• Indicate camp frontages for each camp.
• Indicate fire and access lanes in your layout. Fire and Service Access Lane Requirements for each camp in your HUB can be referenced here.
• Indicate where adjacency between specific camps is necessary.

Layout Format Specs

• A HUB layout should fit on a single page.
• Maximum file size: 10 MB.
• Accepted file types: .jpg .jpeg .pjpeg .png .pdf.
• You must convert .heic format photos to jpeg before uploading. There are many free websites that offer this service.
• Filename must not have spaces.
• The file extension (i.e., .jpg) must be included.
• You must use a computer (not a phone or tablet) to upload your images.
• You must have JavaScript enabled. If you need help with that, see: enable-javascript.com.

8. How is creating a HUB different from forming a village?

Villages are long-standing entities within Black Rock City and are collections of camps that all fall under one identity or theme as a village. Villages have designated mayors who organize and allocate resources like Stewards Sale (formerly Directed Group Sale) tickets and Work Access Passes across subgroups within the village. Villages are offered one address and one boundary for the entire village to subdivide among the camps within it.

HUBS allow for each camp within the HUB to remain autonomous while still being placed as neighbors and to share resources. Each camp can maintain its own name and identity, and have its own designated boundaries. Stewards Sale tickets and WAPs are offered to each individual camp lead rather than one point of contact for the entire HUB.