88NV: an airport as a coordination problem

Three hundred volunteers, one runway, every plane documented.

Black Rock City Municipal Airport is the temporary, FAA- and Nevada DOT-inspected airport at Burning Man. His bio describes it as, for a few days, approximately the 68th busiest airport in the United States, and also a second gate into the event, running a box office, gate, greeting, ramp security and general office functions.

He first went to Burning Man in 1998 and joined founder Lissa Shoun when the airport was established in 1999. After the 2012 event he became airport manager, a role he held to January 2017, managing about 300 volunteers (Spectrum says 400 by the end). He initiated the airport's first organization, the Ministry of Customs, and with other founding volunteers wrote the first manuals defining each airport role. He designed the software that tracked flights, passengers and unauthorized aircraft: every plane, pilot and passenger out there is documented, he told IEEE Spectrum.

He handed command to Meg Kosowski in 2017 and stayed on as a mentor. Spectrum's headline called it giving Burning Man its wings; his colleagues, on account of two medical evacuations, called him Calamity.

Sources: his Stanford bio; IEEE Spectrum, 2018. Where this page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his.