I have never been to Vibecamp, but many of my friends make it an annual pilgrimage. I recently officiated a wedding where the couple met at Vibecamp; the organizers tell me something like 5 married couples have met there, a number I only hope Manifest may someday hit. Also, Brooke has been super helpful in the past (eg by serving as community point of contact for a past Manifest) and is generally an awesome person. I am very excited to support Vibecamp out of my budget for fuzzies!
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vibecamp
Project summary
Vibecamp is a four-day festival/unconference held annually every June at Camp Ramblewood in Maryland. It's part festival, part unconference, part summer camp for adults, founded in 2021. Attendees come from a loose network of internet-adjacent communities, including rationalists, post-rationalists, EAs, burners, tech people, writers, artists, and others, with the common thread being high openness-to-experience and kindness to strangers.
What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?
The core goal is to create high-trust, high-openness in-person gathering for people from all over the world who excel at sharing art and ideas online, giving them a real-world Schelling point to come together on the premise that there's a lot of untapped potential in "finding the others" online and then building real-world connection and projects with them. We achieve this through a largely attendee-driven, unconference format: participants host their own sessions, which historically have ranged from workshops on Bayesian reasoning and philosophy to dance parties, circling, theater, art-making, pool parties, yoga, and late-night fireside conversations.
We have been running Vibecamp annually since 2022 and the feedback has been excellent.
How will this funding be used?
Vibecamp sponsors low-income attendees by offering them discount tickets. Additionally, we set aside a large amount of money for the purpose of arts grants so our community can work together to make great art without needing to worry about funding it. Right now this comes out of vibecamp's pocket, but we would like to expand these offerings and doing so would require external funding. $500 is the average price of a standard ticket, so every $500 raised allows us to offer a low-income ticket as well as support the art grants program as per the normal sales revenue breakdown.
Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?
Our website lists our current team (https://vibe.camp/team/). Our track record is great, we have had successful events with between 400-800 attendees at least once per year since 2022.
What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?
Vibecamp has an established community with a truly dedicated core and is unlikely to completely fail. If attendance declines, we can reduce grants and trim overhead in other ways, which would hurt the event's spirit but not threaten its existence as long as that core continues to believe in our mission. This specific funding goal falling through would mean we would have to either raise ticket prices for general attendees, or drastically cut back on arts grants and attendance from low-income community members.
How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?
We have a donate button on our website and offer a "sponsor" ticket tier for people who want to lend us their support. Altogether we've taken in about $10,000 in the past 12 months from these.