SOCAP is burning?

*This blog post is by People Powered Capital track curator, Rebecca Petzel
If you’re based in San Francisco like so many of the SOCAP team, the final week of August means one of two things:
1. An annual return to the Playa for the Burning Man arts festival
2. A relaxing, enjoyable week in a deserted SF – what we like to call ‘Ghost Town San Francisco’
Suffice it to say, Burning Man has made it’s mark on the city of San Francisco. And while both SF and Burning Man are known as sites where free expression reigns, they are also both so much more than that: bastians of innovation, self-organization.
Which is why it’s probably no surprise that many of the leaders in the Burning Man community are making a much larger impact in our city. As a recent Fast Company article points out “Burning Man isn’t just about getting crazy on the Playa anymore. The organization is now taking on urban revitalization, aiming to fix up the area around its new HQ.”
The final ‘panel’ for People Powered Capital is an interactive session to explore how the SOCAP community can take on this challenge collectively – developing solutions real time to build a showcase for the people-powered economy in the Central Market Street district of San Francisco. You and your SOCAP colleagues will be joined by investors, social entrepreneurs, municipal agencies, and elected officials to make a social impact as we explore how to make Central Market a model for social innovation in the next 9 months.
Burning Man is an experiment in self-reliance, art, the sharing economy. This project aims to use the 10 principles of Burning Man to change urban environments for the better. These principles include radical self-reliance, decommidification, civic responsibility, immediacy, participation, and gifting. How could these principles translate to the urban environment to create a model, sharing, people powered economy?