On Saturday, May 15 nonick has the honour of presenting its key note speaker Andie Grace is Burnin Man’s Communications Manager and Regional Network Manager; her job is talking about Burning Man to the event’s participant community, its year-round Regional Network, and the press and the world at large.

Even her mother calls her “action girl”. Andie Grace is the type of guest who comes to parties and does the dishes and empties the ashtrays. It’s not surprising she found her way to the community, joining the Burning Man staff in 2000, and only three years after she attended the festival in the Nevada dessert for the very first time. Andie Grace was born, raised, and fed in St. Louis, Missouri (USA). Prior to her work for Burning Man, she had been an incorrigible dabbler who was passionately engaged in many different things: advertising, house painting, English tutoring and taking care of emotionally affected children.

Lately she’s found a new passion: producing independent films, which takes up all her little spare time. She was still studying linguistics and human sexuality at San Francisco State University when her hobby, volunteering for Burning Man, evolved into a full-time job.

Burning Man’s community extends far beyond the week of the event each year, and many of its participants engage in year-round efforts to celebrate and share the Burning Man culture. This effort and the popularity of the event have perpetuated widely online (although Burning Man engages in almost no proactive public relations efforts) and the organization and community have long been present in the social media space.

Andie has managed Burning Man’s communication with that community through social media & technology tools for ten years, keeping pace with the development of the social web and helping balance Burning Man’s digital policies with its core principles and values as a culture.

Burning Man
The Burning Man festival takes place in the middle of the Nevada dessert. A vast plain, swept by sandstorms, drought and heat. But precisely at this site, every year, an entire city of fifty thousand people arises. For one week, the Black Rock Nevada dessert is a Mad Max-like world dedicated to community, self-expression and self reliance. Burning Man is a festival where giant art, naked people, bartering, trance music, futuristic cars, light shows and conflagrations all come together. After the festival they all depart, having left no trace whatsoever.

Tags: andie grace, burning man, community manager