The last few months we've been heads down implementing so many awesome features in dust that we had to record a new series of tutorial videos!

If you are short on time here is the TLDR of whats new:

1. Registration Improvements - Theme Camps, Art and Mutant Vehicle registration gets a much easier flow. You now only need 1 link on your website which allows participants to manage every aspect of the camp, art or mutant vehicle.
2. Placement Forms - We've incorporated the forms (like Google Forms, Survey Monkey etc) into the registration process. This means you no longer have to keep this in sync with dust by importing.
3. Management in the App - The management app of dust is now available inside dust!
4. Volunteeripate - A new integration with Volunteeripate means that volunteers can get reminder notifications of their shifts.
5. Offline Improvements - We've improved the experience when you have really bad cell service.
6. Communication - More options for integrating messages like Newsletters, BlueSky and Mastodon.
7. Tutorials Videos - We've recorded a series of bite sized videos for burn organizers.

Registration Improvements​

We've created a single link for each burn that handles everything that participants need for theme camps, art, and mutant vehicles. As an example take a look at bequinox-2025.dust.events:

After login you get a home page that is tailored to the participant of your burn:

• Camp/Art/Mutant Vehicle/Event registration options if they are new (with a follow up placement questionaire).
• or a page to manage their camp etc if they had registered before.
• or access to all features if they are an admin.

We've also made it easier for you to turn on and off registration in the Settings page:

Placement Forms​

Your placement questionaire form for camps, art and mutant vehicles are now part of the registration flow in dust. This means that instead of putting links for these on your website you can add them to dust and they become part of how someone registers a camp, art piece or art car. They receive an email as a reminder to complete the form and are given the opportunity to complete it as they fill in details in dust.

You can turn the feature on by pasting the links to your forms in Settings > Placement:

Here's an example of the follow up email they receive to request completion of forms:

The benefit to you is a streamlined process that captures all the right information without having to manually import files last minute. You can also accomodate camps that don't need placement and you also get a heads up on which camps may be coming to your burn before they complete their placement questionaire.

Management in the App​

You can now manage your burn inside the dust app. This works for all participants including regional organizers. You'll see a new "Participate" section on the home page of your burn:

Coupled with the improvements to the registration and placement forms it should make it much easier for everyone to make last minute changes to events etc, and because it is part of the app it should be quicker than visiting the dust website.

Volunteeripate​

Volunteeripate is a platform to coordinate volunteers (and purchase tickets). Burners can now get reminders of their volunteer shifts by clicking the "Sync with Volunteeripate" button in dust:

For more information on how to integrate Volunteeripate please visit the docs.

Offline Improvements​

At some burns like Love Burn in Miami and Element 11 in Utah there is cell service but it is really really bad. While dust will work offline there are still burners who open the app for the first time when they arrive at the burn.

The first time you open a burn in dust it will download all the camps, art etc. We can't make this part of the app because you need to be able to change this data and the review process for the app can be several days.

So, we've been working hard to make that first download experience much better on a bad cell network.

You may notice that there are some new download progress dialogs like this one in dust:

On a really bad cell network these:

• Give an indication that something is happening even if it is slow
• Will eventually time out if the network is too slow but will let you know this has happened
• Will allow you to retry again in the case of a failure

The end result should be less frustrated burners who didn't open the app before they arrived at the burn. We can't make a bad cell network good but can give clear communication about the process.

Communication​

We've added a new option for communicating with burners. This appears as a "Messages" tab in dust and can show Newsletters, Bluesky or Mastodon posts or an RSS Feed. We have a Video in our tutorials section on this. You can also contact us and we'll help you hook it up.

Tutorial Videos​

We've added a dozen short form videos (~5 minutes) on different features in dust, including:

• Setting up your Burn - Getting your burn into dust in 10 minutes.
• Theme Camps - Theme camp management, importing and placement.
• Art - Art and Mutant Vehicle management and importing.
• Events - Managing events for camps, art and open camping events.
• Map & Placement - Map images, Google Maps, placement and GPS accurancy.
• Communication - Communicating to burners via notifications and messages.
• Printing Event Guide - How to generate a printable event guide.
• Forms - How to hook up Google Forms, Survey Monkey or others for registration and placement.
• Links - Home page links for tickets, survival guide and more.
• Volunteeripate - How to integration with Volunteeripate.
• Last Minute Checklist - What not to forget before driving out the burn.

Burners love to know where mutant vehicles are located and now the dust app can show their live location on the map.

Mutant Vehicle owners can follow these directions to broadcast their location.

Mutant Vehicles that are broadcasting their location appear on the map as a yellow pin. If a mutant vehicle hasn't broadcast it's location in 24 hours then it will show at it's home base (where placement put it).

Live tracking of Mutant Vehicles is available for regional burns only (we'll work on a plan for Burning Man soon). It's only suitable to be used if you have cell service at your burn.

The event selection screen of dust has been given a revamp!

We've added the ability to list events vertically to quickly browse, and we've also added the region/state/country of the event. You'll also notice we no longer use the word "regional" to describe events as we're including community events like camp fundraisers, decompressions and "non-official" regionals.

Another revamp has been the search screen which now shows the distance and direction of camps, art and events and also shows the closest camp/art or event.

We've been working on making registration of theme camps and event easier for everyone.

You'll notice a new button in the dust app Manage my camp & events which will let theme camp organizers (or any burner creating an event) to easily manage their camp, it's events and music. You can also use this as a way to manage the regional burn from your phone.

The new button handles registration of new camps or editing a camp or burn. Once you have registered a camp the label will change to Manage [your-camp-name].

The new button appears when your burn has the setting Allow Camp Registration turned on in Settings and is hidden if you turn the setting off (You'll need to click Publish when you make a change).

Newsletter​

We've recently started a newsletter for dust. If you are interested in finding out about new features and update you can sign up for the newsletter.

Volunteeripate​

We've been chatting with Cabbie from Volunteeripate about a collaboration. If you haven't heard of Volunteeripate, it's a platform for volunteer management and ticket sales for regional burns. Details of the collaboration are still being worked out but we're excited at the opportunity to make it easier for burners to volunteer at a burn and easily access their tickets for gate checkin.

We're super excited to announce some new features for dust related to messaging burners interested in your regional!

Push Notifications​

You can now send push notifications out to burners who have accessed your regional in dust. This is a great way for announcements like ticket sales, burn times, deadlines for submissions or soliciting volunteer signups.

Notifications can be sent on their own, along with a social media post or when an email is sent out for your newsletter.

Mastodon​

You may post to social media when you have important announcements. Now dust can also show these posts in a "Messages" tab that will appear. When the notification goes out it will also send a push notification to burners who have accessed your regional burn.

Mastodon is a radically different social media platform. It is more akin to email in that it is not in control of any one company. It is also open meaning that unlike Facebook etc it is possible to easily integrate into systems like dust.

As Mastodon has no advertising and selling your data not their motivation, it feels like it fits in a lot better with the 10 Burning Man principles, particularly Decommodification.

You can read more about how to setup the Mastodon integration in the docs.

Newsletters​

Do you have a mailing list for important announcements? Now you can have any emails sent out automatically appear in the dust app and a push notification sent out to your burners.

You can read more about how to set this up in the docs.

This month I had the pleasure to present at Burn After Meeting which is a conference for regional burn event organizers to share practical concerns and solutions, to learn from each other rather than learning the hard way, and to build an environment of mutual support.

I was able to run through a demo of the dust app and what it can do for a regional burn. All of this was in person, which makes a big difference as up until now the regionals I've worked with have all been achieved by coordinating over Google Meet, email or Messenger.

It may not be that helpful but here is the presentation from the session.

October Fixes​

This month there have been a few fixes with dust including:

• When pasting descriptions for events from a PDF the text is cleaned up to remove line breaks.
• When imported KML files the pin for polygons is now calculated as its center.
• A new feature was added to delete all events.
• Fix for importing events via CSV where the start day is different to the end day (ie over midnight)
• Support for shuttle stops and other markers added for maps.

Upcoming Features​

Work has started on new communication features for dust!

The dust app has primarily been used during a burn but some new communication features will mean that it can be used year round.

You'll be able to send push notifications out to burners interested in your burn!

This is going to be done in an interesting way: posting to social media. You'll be able post to Mastodon and your message will be sent out to all dust users who have accessed your burn in dust. They will also be able see all previous messages in dust.

This works a little bit more like email but as dust users will also be able to find previous messages in dust it means they won't miss any messages if they are a first time dust user.

The other feature this enables is that since you post to social media users can reply there.

It's still early for these features and development has only just started, so we'll see how this pans out over the next month or so.

Why Mastodon?​

Mastodon is a radically different social media platform. It is more akin to email in that it is not in control of any one company. It is also open meaning that unlike Facebook etc it is possible to easily integrate into systems like dust.

As Mastodon has no advertising and selling your data not their motivation, it feels like it fits in a lot better with the 10 Burning Man principles, particularly Decommodification.

Burning Man is obviously a massive time for dust. I don't track numbers of users but having an Apple and Google developer account means that I do have some idea of how many people are using the app, and it looks like there were around 20k of you using the app on average 5 times during the week of the burn.

After burn week I posed a question asking for feedback and collected hundreds of responses. This was then broken down into features and fixes and prioritized by importance. The feature request list has been used to create a roadmap and for the fixes it has resulted in a busy September cleaning up issues not only for Burning Man but also for regionals too.

The full list of fixes for september is below, but in summary fixes included better offline support, fixes for swiping back from pages, automatically opening the app the last event and a whole lot more.

The list of features implemented has been limited because having a super stable app is the priority but there are also some cool features added including reminders for things like volunteer shifts, filtering for camp types (like sound camps) and art types (like mutant vehicles). Imports from Google Maps have been improved and visual improvements on the app and manager website too.

I'd like to thank everyone who gave their feedback and suggestions. There is still a lot of work helping out regionals with their events but I'm hoping to get to some of the really fun features by the end of the year.

Dust Manager Fixes for September 2024​

• Add art type to art to support mutant vehicles
• Add camp type to camp to support sound camps
• Import KML added for art
• Fix: KML import now matches items that have additional spaces or special characters
• Added ability to change the CSS for the static camps / events pages
• Remove times for start and end of burn
• Added web page for art listings and art
• Import KML for new art and new camps
• Improve layout and styling of the dust editor

Dust App Fixes for September 2024​

• Private events are now reminders and are available in regional burns
• Mutant Vehicles show location as "Out on the Playa"
• Recurring events are shown with an icon
• Add spacing between event types
• Art shows side image layout if < 50% of art has an image
• Fix swipe to remove events from favorites
• Fix for event listing
• Fix to refresh event listing when changing filter
• Fix when going back to camps/events page and seeing white content
• Fix auto starting the event if closed while selected
• Scroll to the last event you visited (after pressing < and >)
• Fix where music shows no events on first view
• The music section will scroll the current day into view
• Rock Star Librarian data for sets crossing midnight have day incremented
• Remove swipe to go back for pages that have the map
• Confirmation added when deleting a friend
• Pass version number with requests for data
• Add camp types to accommodate sound camps
• Add art types to accommodate mutant vehicles
• Use experimental zoneless change detection
• Use isolatedModules to speed up builds
• Avoid app update unless on wifi

Its been a busy month for dust to get ready for Burning Man!

A walkthrough video of dust was created to show what's new.

Here's a detailed list of the changes up to version 2.52:

Features​

• Audio tour added for art
• We've optimized startup performance reducing the time by around 50%
• The print layout for favorites is now multi column and will fit on one page
• Fuzzy search for art, events and camps
• Search all feature
• We've added links for Burning Man
• Maps can now be shared (eg where I'm camped)
• Swipe on favorites will now allow you to delete the favorite
• Download updates will also check for a new version of the app
• Swipe to go back added back into the app
• Next and previous buttons added to events to make it easier to flip between events
• Add near me checkbox for camps, events and art
• Show multiple camps at a single location as a count
• Show facing directions for Burning Man
• Show badge count of favorited items
• Search on map now zooms to and animates the found item
• Double tap on map for zoom in/far/out

Fixes​

• When an event is favorited in details then the favorite star will appear on the event list
• Version information shown on the bottom of the home page
• Clicking music event in favorites will not open blank page
• Fixes for calendar sync on Android
• Layout fixed when text zoom is used
• Tap anywhere on a popup in maps to dismiss it
• Show distance at bottom of event so that it is visible

It was Friday around 4am at Burning Man, I'd been out to the billion bunny march the day before still wearing a full fur bunny outfit and some 12 hours later I'd just finished off the last of my water after dancing my butt off at Sonic Sound Tribe. I was walking past the crowd and into the sea of bikes and realized that I'd forgotten the visual markers of where I had left my bike. Where's my Bike?

I knew I had it lit up with red LEDs, it should be easy to find, but wasn't. It was a solid hour of work to hunt it down, someone had knocked it over, it was under another bike and the battery pack had been disconnected when it fell over.

As I began the trek to get water the sun was peeking over the horizon, the wind had picked up and a white out had begin. I resigned to calling it a night, cursing I hadn't found my bike sooner.

Fast forward to today, I've decided that I don't want this to happen to you, because I know it will! So, in dust, there is a now a new feature to help you find your bike, camp, the cool art piece you want to show your friend, or any other thing you want to drop a pin on the map to find.

On the home page, there is a new section "Find My". You can press one of the items to show it on the map, or if you haven't set its location it will get a GPS location and save it for you.

The map will show where you are, which way you are facing, and will tell you how far away you need to walk and whether your bike/pin is to your left, right, ahead of you or behind you.

Once you've found your bike don't forget to clear the location (click Clear or Delete in the top right corner).

The GPS on your phone will usually be accurate to 10-20ft which should be enough to help narrow down your search area.

The real trick is to remember to place the pin where you left your bike is in the first place. Hopefully, if you're reading this you'll remember my story when you decide to park your bike outside the big sound camps.

The map in dust is one of the most important features in dust but until now we've been using a simple 3rd party control (called ngx-pinch-zoom) which kinda worked but also wasn't great.

So, over the last month I've built my own map control using WebGL and Three JS resulting a much better map experience:

• The map is 3D rather than 2D!
• You can zoom in much further into the map without losing resolution
• Pins and points are now much more precisely placed
• Pins are now color coded better (green for restrooms, blue for art, purple for medical)
• Maps for camps etc will center on the Pin to make it easier to find

With the basics of the new map in place, it provides some opportunities for some new features in the future. Please take a look and let me know whether you ruin into any issues or have any suggestions.