  The "small world phenomenon," popularized by Stanley Milgram, suggests that
individuals from across a social network are connected via a short path of
mutual friends and can leverage their local social information to efficiently
traverse that network. Existing social search experiments are plagued by high
rates of attrition, which prohibit comprehensive study of social search. We
investigate this by conducting a small world experiment at Burning Man, an
event located in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, USA, known its unique social
systems and community participation. We design location-tracking vessels that
we routed through Burning Man towards the goal of finding a particular person.
Along the way, the vessels logged individual information and GPS data. Two of
fifteen vessels made it to their designated people, but a month after Burning
Man. Our results suggest possible improvements to limit rates of attrition
through community participation and a design methodology that emphasizes
cultural practices to aid social experimentation.
