voting continues, now until tuesday. the jrs announced the end day as tuesday, not this saturday, so we have gladly gone with this error. voting is proving to be fun. we encourage you to vote early and often (though we have the technology to catch you if you do . . .). you can see the real time results here: www.aumond.com/publicResults.jsp info on the voting is at borg2.tribe.net.

what i'm finding interesting is which projects the voting is selecting. ones of clear merit are being selected, along lines similar to what the internal borg1 process would likely pick. but what is really interesting is that the ones rising to the top are the ones that have made a biggest scene in public and have lots of people and excitement around them.

i find this a feature, not a bug. in the burning man amateur hour special olympics of art, lots of people and lots of excitement are as big of predictor of success as nearly any assessment of artistic merit or particulars of the proposed. if you have enough people, enthusiasm and cleverness, building a pile of dirt can turn into a fabulously interesting disaster, as we all know.

the voting is proving to be a very good tool for teasing out these projects which have a critical mass of people and excitement around them. voters are not simply chosing the big names and most audaciuos fire weenie. they are chosing the projects with a strong community around them, and the ones involving people that have proved themselves through lots of public doing.

in doing so, i find the voting to be impressively honing in on factors critical to successful burning man art. collaborative creative work, broadly defined, is our main vehicle towards community. and the voting seems to be well ranking projects by their potential for this sort of real community forming collaboration.

j