New Registration Flows & Volunteeripate

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.