The Future Turtles Camp
People, teams, and spirit of the Future Turtles
- Work Requirements to Camp With the Future Turtles
- How Building Camp Works
- Build 2025
- Teams and Leadership - 2025
- Camp Design and Architecture
- Burning Man 2025 Tickets
- The Future Turtles Charter Bus
- Strike 2025
Work Requirements to Camp With the Future Turtles
Camping for a week in the harsh Black Rock Desert is tough. We try to make it easier by collaborating to build a beautiful camp, organizing delicious shared meals together, and providing communal gifts to the Burning Man community.
The magic of Burning Man is the collaboration. Not only will you be collaborating to build something really awesome that you can be proud of, but you will test your own limits, learn many new skills, and make incredible friends for life. Burning Man is a transformative experience and the people you go through it with make all the difference.
This all takes a ton of work, both in the months leading up to the event getting everything ready, and during the week of Burning Man itself. To camp with us, you can expect to put in several days of work before you even get to the event, and several hours of shifts every day once we’re there.
Off-Playa Contribution
Each turtle is required to contributed meaningfully to the preparation for Burning Man in one of the following ways:
- Participate in a work weekend in Reno, NV in the spring to help prepare our gear
- Join the early build team, arriving on playa a week before everyone else to build the camp
- Join the post-strike team, staying behind on playa a day and helping put away gear in Reno after the event
- As a part of the food and beverages team, prepare food and the food truck in Reno before the burn
- Meaningfully contribute to a camp art project and/or bring your own form of art
On Playa Work Teams
Every turtle will also be a part of a work team on playa. The teams may change a bit from year to year, but in 2024 we had the following work teams:
- Food (preparing two hot meals a day)
- Dining Room (serving meals and cleaning the dining room afterwards; maintaining snack stations)
- Drinks (including drinks served at parties, water and electrolyte drinks available to campers, and ice)
- LNT (cleaning the public areas of the camp)
- Gayflower (cleaning the private shower area)
- Infrastructure (maintaining the generator and water infrastructure)
These teams organize their own shifts throughout the event week, with a goal that each turtle contribute approximately 12 hours of work during the week as a part of their particular team.
Other Teams
We have a variety of teams, large and small, that take care of some of the other things that keep our camp working. These teams often meet in advance of Burning Man to prepare and their work during the event may vary depending on the team. This work is all in addition to the work shifts mentioned above, and almost every turtle contributes to at least one of these teams. Your contribution may be to one of these existing projects, or you might have an idea to start your own project!
| Team |
Typical pre-playa work |
Typical on-playa work |
Typical post-playa work |
| Parties |
Choose themes for parties, prepare decor and accessories, line up DJs and entertainment, produce publicity and submit events to Playa Events, coordinate with drinks team |
Run the parties, make sure there are volunteers to staff parties as greeters, monitors, consent monitors, bike parking, lighting directors, DJs, and bartenders |
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| Guardians |
Plan for orientation activities, schedule training for new turtles and pre-playa meeting sessions |
Deal with personal, emotional, health issues, and conflict that may come up; coach campers whose behavior puts them at risk of not getting invited back |
Produce programming for re-integration and "decompression" from playa; make sure unresolved issues during the week are addressed |
| Bikes | Inventory bikes and order new parts |
Check bikes out and in |
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| Turtle Truck |
Reserve a rental truck and pick it up; coordinate load-in and drive to playa |
Coordinate load-in, drive from playa, take camp trash to the dump, wash truck and return it |
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| Turtle Bus | Coordinate the charter bus and make sure the right people are on it and it goes to the right places; communicate with riders |
Coordinate the charter bus and make sure the right people are on it and it goes to the right places; communicate with riders | |
| Camp Decor and Design |
Plan camp layout and decor |
Set up decor and lights |
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| Art Projects |
Build art for the playa Work on an art car |
Set up art, maintain art lighting, maintain art car, etc. |
Take down art |
| Pillow Fort | Plan pillow fort layout and decor |
Coordinate on-playa pillow fort activities |
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| Workshops and Events |
Prepare some kind of on-playa workshop or event |
Example events: Tarot Reading, Turkish Coffee Fortunetelling, HIIT training, Yoga, workshops and small classes, etc. |
How Building Camp Works
A typical year for the Build Team, assuming all goes well and there is no weather emergency or space alien invasion or global pandemic or plague of locusts, looks like this:
We meet in Reno, NV on Monday the week before Burning Man. In Reno, we do some last minute preparations, and get the Build Team RV ready to go. In 2024 the biggest thing was just buying food for the build team itself.
On Tuesday morning as early as possible, we drive from Reno to Black Rock City.
Once we arrive in Black Rock City, we wait for Placement to show us where our camp will be located. Once we find it, we do the first MOOP sweep and start surveying and measuring and putting little flags in the ground where things will go.
As soon as we have established exactly where everything goes, we call the trucking services to bring us all our stuff, the generator rental company to bring the generator, the water company to bring their tanks, etc. Then we start preparing for the first night, putting down enough shade structures for our own team to sleep in.
If all has gone well, we have managed to build six shiftpods for the first night with protective tarps above and below by the time we go to sleep on Tuesday.
Over the course of the rest of the week, we get as much built as possible. That includes all of our public and private shade structures, tents, electrical grid, water system, and as much of the camp decor as we can get done. Hopefully around Thursday night or Friday the food team rolls in and starts feeding us and setting up the kitchen and dining room. A lot of campers arrive Saturday before the gates officially open and help finish anything we didn't get done. And that's about it!
Build Week is one of the best parts of Burning Man. It's amazing to arrive in a giant empty desert and transform it to a city.
Here's the Build Team Movie!
Build 2025
Build Plan 2025
Early Build Team
We have 12 tuesday SAPs:
| builder | arriving Reno | Transport Reno -> Playa | |
| 1 | Joel | Mon Aug 18 1pm flight from NY | Turtle RV |
| 2 | Beam | Mon Aug 18 1pm flight from NY | Turtle RV |
| 3 | Basil | Mon Aug 18 1pm flight from NY | Turtle RV |
| 4 | Madame Vivien V | Mon Aug 18 1pm flight from NY | Turtle RV |
| 5 | Dat | Mon Aug 18 1pm flight from NY | Turtle RV |
| 6 | Gary | Mon Aug 18 1pm flight from NY | Turtle RV |
| 7 | Klajdi | Jeremy's car (from SF - there from July 24) | |
| 8 | Jeremy | Jeremy's car (from SF ) | |
| 9 | Alex H | Jeremy's car (from SF - SFO flight Mon Aug 18 2:15pm) | |
| 10 | Ed | Jeremy's car (from SF - SFO flight Mon Aug 18 2:15pm) | |
| 11 | Neptune | own van | |
| 12 | PB | own van |
Here's the tentative calendar for 2025.
| Date / Time | Early Build Team | Food Team |
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Mon Aug 18 1:00p |
Meet in Reno
Jeremy's car will arrive in Reno 6-7 pm
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Tue Aug 19 6:00 am |
Entry
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Wed Aug 20 |
General Build
Team A: Shade Structure Team B: Interactive Pavilion Team C: Utilities (petrol, music while working, water, power) |
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Thu Aug 21 |
General Build continues |
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Fri Aug 22 |
General Build continues |
Enter playa |
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Sat Aug 22 |
Furnishings and decor Turtles arrive |
Early Build Team - Sequence - 2025
We have a big build team this year so we're going to split into three groups!
| Leonardos | Donatellos | Michaelangelos | |
| Arrival | Park RV temporarily where the food fort will eventually go Wait for placement |
Wait for placement | Make breakfast |
| After Placement |
Survey for Peik Deliveries
Call Peik 775-674-9207 |
Survey for Empire Deliveries
Measure and mark fire lane. Then flag locations for Empire Fort, Moving Truck, Water, Shower, and Generator.
Sierra Site Svcs 888-458-8777 Generator World 916-668-0605 |
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| After Deliveries |
First tarps
Lay down six tarps as numbered on schematic (enough for the initial outpost and Shiftpods for build team) |
First EMT structure ("sticks")
Follow Leonardos building sticks for initial outpost: the Kink Fort, and, time permitting, enough to protect six shiftpods for the build team. |
Turtle event sign
Build and light the sign listing our events at the street corner |
| First Shiftpods Follow Michaelangelos to setup first six shiftpods |
Make dinner | ||
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Personal setup and dinner -- done for the night. |
Personal setup and dinner -- done for the night. |
Personal setup and dinner -- done for the night. |
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| Wednesday |
Remaining Tarps |
Remaining sticks
Follow Leonardos building sticks |
Pavillion
Assemble mast on ground. Include sails, guylines, Turtle sign and its power cord along guyline, and two paracord pulleys on each face (allowing things to be pulled up to the top later).
When mast is assembled, all hands gather to raise it and secure guylines. |
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Remaining Shade
Follow Donatellos adding tarps to sticks |
Remaining Shiftpods
Follow Leonardos setting up Shiftpods |
Pavilion
Anchor all the sails and perfect |
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dinner and done for the night |
dinner and done for the night |
dinner and done for the night |
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| Thursday |
Electrical grid
Generator, all banded cables, distribution boxes, and spider boxes
Initial power up and test |
Amenities
Light whips in bike parking area Bike parking signs Lotus Belle Tent and its Furnishings (including ACs)
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Observation Decks Set up and anchor ladders for observation decks
Build pipe structure on observation decks
Connect wire guardrails
Connect final pavilion sails to observation decks |
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Dining Room Setup
Tables, chairs, camper cubbies, signs and whiteboards, snack area |
Utility Lighting
String lights for dining area and camper shiftpod area |
DJ and Audio Gear
Setup and wire all speakers Get DJ gear working (booth may not have arrived)
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dinner and done for the night |
dinner and done for the night |
dinner and done for the night |
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| Friday |
DMX Lights
Connect and test everything on the ground Then mount it in final locations |
Water setup
SSS water connection for food fort SSS grey water connection for food fort Water filling station in dining room Set up backup pumping mechanisms (fresh / grey between Food and Gayflower) |
Pillow Fort Setup
Empty remaining items in Pillow Fort |
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Teams and Leadership - 2025
Food
The food team is responsible for preparing healthy and delightful food for campers. We aim to provide two hot meals daily. Lunch is served at noon which is also the daily camp meeting and mandatory for everyone. Dinner is served at 6pm. This year we are going to put more emphasis on making it easy to find something healthy to heat up and eat at any hour.
Lead: Christophe
Subteam: Healthy Snacks
Mess Tent
This team serves the food, maintains the snack area, cleans up after meals in the dining room and keeps that area clean and tidy.
Lead: Scott
Guardians
The guardians team is responsible for camper's emotional well being, camp cohesion, new camper acculturation, and other "soft skills." They are responsible for noticing campers in crisis and other difficult situations and either helping out or arranging professional help.
Lead: Jihoon
Finances
Keeps the books for the camp, collects camp dues, files camp tax returns (990s), and arranges reimbursement for campers who purchased things on behalf of the camp. Going forward, this team will also create a budget for each department.
Lead: Ben W
Team: Alejandro
Tools, Supplies, and Procurement
Camp storage, tools, equipment, and supplies. Maintains inventory spreadsheets, figures out what we need for camp and how to get it to playa. Leads the project during Reno Work Weekend to prepare the Tool Fort for playa making sure we arrive with everything we need. Publishes the "where is it" sheet so that campers, and especially the build team, can find things quickly and figure out where to put things away.
Lead: Spacemaster
Parties and Events
Plans all the camp parties. Publishes events to PlayaEvents, including any smaller events put on by campers. Publicizes all the events on- and off-playa
Co-leads: Grant, Peter
Music / Audio
Manages all audio gear and also the DJ program for our events.
Lead: Ben W
Team: Shuai
Architecture and Layout
Designs the camp frontage and major structures to be built by the build team. Produces schematic plans and drawings required by Placement, Build, Infrastructure, and other teams.
Lead: Gary
Transport
Organizes a truck from San Francisco to bring bulky items to and from playa. Drops off the camp MOOP at a dump. (No personal moop!)
Lead: Alex Sartel
Bikes
Manages and maintains our fleet of 50 bicycles.
Lead: Alex Sartel
Build
Arrives early on playa to build the camp.
- Lead: tbd
Confirmed Builders: Beam*, Basil*, Joel*, Jeremy S, Mdm Viv*, Klajdi, Dat*, Alex H, Ed, Gary*
Possible Builders (not 100% yet) Jon, Jorge
* = new york
Infrastructure
Manages the electrical grid and the water system, including fresh water, grey water, and black water and the Gayflower.
Jetpack, Ben Wild, Beam, Space Master, Kyle
Strike
Plans the strike of camp at the end of burn week. Coordinates all campers on playa to help take everything down easily and quickly and leave it in good condition for next year.
Lead: Efendi
Volunteer Coordinator
Insures that there are volunteers lined up for every shift on playa. Prepares those big charts telling everyone where to show up for their shifts.
Romain
Drinks
Plans and purchases any drinks that we gift at our bar, whether alcoholic or not. Organizes a steady supply of ice, ice water, and electrolyte drink for campers 24/7 and coffee for campers in the morning.
Alex Holman?
Camp Tickets Coordinator
Helps campers secure tickets to Burning Man. Manages the Stewards Sale program that insures our camp can receive a certain number of tickets.
Lead: Jeremy
Pillow Fort
Designs and plans the pillow fort / cuddle fort areas of camp
Lead: Tristan
Recruiting & Acculturation
Finds great new Turtles and prepares them for Burning Man
Lead: Jorge
Moop Squad
Organizes LNT efforts on playa. Keeps the camp clean throughout the week, especially public areas.
Lead: -
Camp Design and Architecture
What our camp looks like!
2025 Camp Plan
This PDF shows the camp plan for the Future Turtles 2025.
2025 Pavillion
We are considering a major redesign of the main interactive area of the camp for 2025. The concept would be to have a single, strong central pole supporting multiple shade triangles.
Inspiration pictures
Schematic
Aesthetic (Tomorrow Today!)
The theme of our public areas, Tomorrow Today, pulls elements from:
- Atomic Art
- Jetsons Aesthetic
- Mid-century
- Googie Architecture
Reference images:
Burning Man 2025 Tickets
https://tickets.burningman.org/
Important dates:
| Date | Thing | Details |
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| Wednesday 4/30/2025 12:00 pm PST | STEP Sale Registration Opens |
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| Wednesday 7/30/2025 12:00 pm PST | OMG sale Commences |
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The Future Turtles Charter Bus
Starting in 2024, we chartered a whole bus from Burner Express Bus (BxB) to bring our campers directly to our camp on playa and home. This is a huge win for so many reasons!
- Super convenient. Direct drop off and pick up right in our camp
- Nobody has to drive their personal cars to playa
- Nobody has to wait in line for gate or exodus - the bus skips the line!
- Ensures that its easy for our campers to stick around until the last minute of strike.
2025 Future Turtles Bus FAQ
Just like the Burner Bus Express, the Future Turtles Bus skips the line to enter and exit playa -- which can save ten hours some years! It is operated by Burning Man, but it is chartered by the Future Turtles and goes directly to our camp at 7:00 and E, in the heart of the queerborhood.
WHY THE BUS IS AWESOME
- Your personal car does not get trashed from being on playa!
- You don't have to rent a car and explain to the rental agency that you are absolutely not going to Burning Man and then pay a huge cleaning fee!
- You SKIP THE LINE to enter and exit Black Rock City. The line can be ten hours each way!
- You are riding with TURTLES!
- You can SLEEP all the way home because you're going to be TIRED!
ABOUT THE FUTURE TURTLES BUS
Our bus is similar to the Burner Bus Express, in fact, it is operated by Burning Man, but this one goes right to and from our camp on Playa, so you don't have to take the on-playa shuttle, or drag your gear for miles through the dirt!
- Departure Saturday, August 23, 9:00am
- at the Safeway 16th & Bryant, San Francisco
- Making one stop to pick up passengers at the Grand Sierra Resort, Reno, NV at approximately 1:00pm
NO SAP IS NEEDED to enter Black Rock City on Saturday with the bus!
- Return Monday, September 1, 3:00pm
- from the Future Turtles Theme Camp
- One stop at Grand Sierra Resort, Reno, NV
- Then continuing to 16th & Bryant, San Francisco
Due to the unpredictable nature of the road leading to Burning Man, the possibility of inclement weather or accidents causing that road to be closed, and other difficulties operating in a remote environment, it is impossible to predict when the bus might depart or arrive, so all times must be taken with a grain of salt.
RULES
- You must have a physical ticket to the Burning Man event in hand to board the inbound bus. The bus cannot stop at will-call to pick up tickets--sorry!
- If you have a Ticket Aid ticket or some other kind of ticket that can only be picked up at will-call, you will have to go to the Burning Man Express Bus stop in San Francisco or Reno in advance of your bus ride to pick up your ticket.
- Priority will be given to Turtles but we will also open up remaining spaces to other burners in our neighborhood to help defray our costs.
LUGGAGE
- The luggage allowance is up to two (2) items, and one carry-on item. Each piece of luggage may not exceed 62 linear inches (length + width + depth) or weigh more than 50lbs.
- We do not have room for extra luggage or bicycles. There may be room to send extra cargo or bikes with the Turtle Truck. This travels separately from the bus and you will need to make a reservation for that separately.
| Month | One Way (SF) |
One Way (Reno) |
| June | $180 | $140 |
| July | $190 | $150 |
| August | $200 | $160 |