Photographs by Toby Vann unless otherwise stated

 After setting up our own camp, we began to have clients trickle into our camp to help set up theirs. Little by little our teams got sent out, building

Archimedes Design

domes across the playa. I'll talk about my own personal Burning Man experience a little bit later, but the initial few days were just working with clients and getting stuff set up. 

Everyone we helped set up was pretty great. Mostly they were just so happy to have on-playa help that every installation was fun, with high spirits, lots of teamwork, and gifts of beer and snacks. 

 My favourite dome that my team helped with was a bunch a hilarious New Zealanders, who added such excitement as offering to let us play with their flamethrower.

Photograph by me

I also loved how they decorated the inside of their dome, creating this beautiful calm sacred space. I love how the colours of the star shades show through the inner tent, giving the beautiful impression of sacred geometry to the interior.

Photograph by me

Within the first few days we started having some problems though. The first problems were with clients who had tried to set up without our help and forgot to do things like stake out tether lines to hold the dome in place, or who hadn't aligned the circle of the dome correctly. These domes are held together with pressure, and it's pretty important to have them aligned correctly or the hubs take too much weight.

The second problem was that the 

Lodge domes

, which is our biggest size available to clients, were having issues taking the pressures of the wind. They were fine with the just the shade stars on them, but the ones with tents inside were pulling too much with the high winds. 

This was a problem because the majority of our clients had the hubs that we pressed by hand. 

This meant that each hub had a slight weak spot where the metal was pressed. So when there was a really high wind, or when the dome was set up unbalanced, a hub or two would invert, slightly caving in a part of the dome. 

This problem was knocked out completely by the invention of the new cast hub. In our own camp we had a dome that was bigger than a Lodge set up with these hubs, and it had absolutely no problem. But unfortunately we had only gotten our first shipment of the new prototype hubs a month earlier, so most of our clients had the old version which we no longer sell.

All of our clients were still amazing about it though. They all graciously understood that it was our first startup year, and that meant sometimes there's bugs to work out. It just meant that our teams were working for a good portion of the week. We got really good at surgically removing and replacing hubs. And we luckily had brought more than enough extras to manage. 

In the end most of our clients ungraded to the new hub for a reduced price, which means not having that problem any more. It also meant that with their own elbow grease, they could cut new poles in

Nomad

size, and have a new smaller stable dome with the old hubs.

While it was definitely more work than we had bargained for on the playa, it was amazing to have such fun  (and understanding) clients, and it was really amazing to see what everyone did to make their domes individual and unique!