For thirteen years, the camp I attend at Burning Man has faced the same logistical hurdles: coordinating 150 campers and friends across a 10-day festival using nothing but Excel spreadsheets. With participants managing everything from power requirements to kitchen duties, the annual struggle to organize camp life had become as much a part of the Burning Man experience as the art installations themselves.
As a co-founder at Lucenn, an innovative AI Dev shop, and partner at super{set} in San Francisco, I get to see how AI is automating and transforming all kinds of business processes on a daily basis. I’m not a software engineer, not an expert–I don’t know how to read or write a single line of code. But I understood pretty well the requirements and functionality needed to create an effective coordination tool. So, I was like, well, how can I put what I’ve done in Excel and extract that logic and put it in a more intuitive, easier-to-use solution?
Wrangling An Annual Exodus
The camp I participate in consists of a wide diversity of people and represents a unique challenge in festival logistics. With 150 participants, dozens of tents, campers and other forms of housing spread across a 125-by-600-foot plot in the Nevada desert, coordination requirements extend far beyond typical camping arrangements for, say, a family weekend trip.
Every year it’s a pain just to have people sign up for volunteer slots. The camp operates on a contribution-based system where every participant pitches in on various activities—from cooking and cleaning to setup and breakdown duties. Managing these assignments through Excel created constant confusion, with participants struggling to navigate complex formulas and camp administrators fielding endless questions about scheduling conflicts.
The limitations became particularly apparent when trying to coordinate housing assignments, power requirements (ranging from 20 to 50 amps per unit depending on housing type), and the intricate logistics of feeding 150 people daily in an environment with no infrastructure.
Enter Lovable & Cursor: Democratizing Development
Despite my lack of a software development background, I decided to tackle this challenge head-on. Using Lovable, an AI-powered development platform that allows non-programmers to create functional applications through natural language conversations, I conceptualized and created a comprehensive web application that promises to transform how large camps can manage their operations at the iconic desert festival.
Lovable operates via a chat-based interface where users describe their needs in plain English, and the AI generates functional code, database structures and user interfaces. The platform supports full-stack web development, handling everything from front-end design to back-end database management, all through conversational interactions. The tool allows you to just chat and bring ideas to life and then create.
Six months ago I thought you needed to be a software engineer to do this, but after a few days interacting with Lovable, here I was with a workable web app prototype. While the Lovable platform has its limitations—simple design changes can require many chats and iterations compared to seconds of key entry for an experienced developer—it opens software creation to anyone with clear requirements and patience for iteration.
Building Beyond Spreadsheets
Once the web application was tested and functioning as planned, I switched over to the Cursor platform, which enabled me to convert the source code into a mobile app available for download on the Apple Store. Check it out: it’s the Dust Dream app.
So the process was: Lovable for the web app along with Supabase for the database, then I leveraged Cursor, which taught me all about Xcode and allowed me to create an app that has been reviewed and approved by Apple. The Dust Dream app promises to transform camp management from a data entry nightmare into an intuitive, user-friendly mobile app experience. Participants can view personalized dashboards showing their arrival dates, housing assignments, activity schedules and point tallies. The system automatically calculates contributions and highlights any gaps in coverage across the camp’s various operational needs.
For camp administrators, Dust Dream provides comprehensive oversight tools. Housing coordinators can instantly access detailed information about each accommodation, including size specifications, power requirements and arrival schedules. Kitchen managers can view cooking assignments and helper allocations for every camp member registering for activities. The system even includes downloadable reports for offline reference—crucial given Burning Man’s notoriously poor cellular connectivity.
I can report that everyone who’s tested out Dust Dream is extremely happy with it. Our camp’s founder put it this way: “Brother, what you have created here is amazing. Your ideas and ability to articulate them to AI is nothing short of awesome.”
The Connectivity Challenge
A critical aspect of the app design addresses Burning Man’s unique technological constraints. With spotty or non-existent internet connectivity across the 7-square-mile temporary city, traditional cloud-based applications often fail when participants need them most. Of course, disconnecting from the grid is one the main attractions of Burning Man, but the lack of connectivity does present challenges to organization.
Dust Dream addresses this situation by requiring all scheduling details, housing assignments, and task allocations to be input and cached within the application before the festival begins. This approach ensures that even without reliable internet access, camp members can access their personalized schedules and administrators can manage operations throughout the 10-day event.
Beyond Burning Man: The Broader Implications
While designed specifically for my own camp’s needs, Dust Dream represents something larger: a template that other camps could adapt for their own organizational challenges. The underlying framework addresses common issues faced by any large group attempting to coordinate complex logistics in resource-constrained environments—whether on the playa in the high desert of Nevada or anywhere.
The success also highlights the democratizing potential of AI development tools. My experience suggests that domain expertise—understanding the specific requirements and pain points of a problem—may be more valuable than technical programming skills when AI tools can handle code generation. The implications extend far beyond festival coordination. From small businesses streamlining operations to community organizations managing volunteers or even emergency management teams heading up disaster relief efforts, the barriers between identifying problems and implementing technological solutions continue to diminish.
Burning Man 2025 runs August 24 – September 1 in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The camp Adrien attends supports educational initiatives in Africa through their participation in the festival.
Adrien Le Gouvello is Partner at super{set} AI Advisors and co-founder of Lucenn, with more than 12 years of experience driving innovation for Fortune 100 companies and startups. He specializes in applying AI to solve complex business challenges, having built platforms that delivered outcomes such as an 80% efficiency gain in proposal generation and $10.6 million in bookings through advanced target screening. Previously, he led transformative consulting projects across M&A, go-to-market, and ESG growth initiatives, spanning industries from technology to consumer goods and healthcare.
