Minor complaint: It felt like you spent most of the space going over obvious (to me, at least) things like how to use Facebook/Meetup. The only reason I’ve not started a group in my area is because I have no idea what would happen at events. This article did not do much to clarify.
Unrelated: Question: Why do you recommend Facebook, specifically, to start with?
Not the OP, but I’ve run a bunch of events with a college group and we consistently got higher turnout when we used Facebook invites than other methods. I suspect it’s a good way to reach people because everyone checks Facebook all the time and people can see that their friends are going.
EVENTS—To clarify, most of our events are just social events. People turn up at a pub and discuss whatever takes their fancy often including effective altruism. This is low effort but seems to be working.
FACEBOOK—My cop out answer to this is just—this is what I did and it worked for me. (This post is an awkward mix of writing up what I did in a way that could be posted to the EA wiki so that others could edit it and add their advice.) That said the “copy event” feature does make it very very easy to create repeat events with minimal effort until you get round to starting an actual facebook group.
Most of the pubs in London are happy to have families with young kids come in, and I haven’t seen anyone have their age checked despite being a young looking group.
Even when our events are not in pubs we do not really attract many (if any) under 18s so I suspect the negative impacts of people not being able to turn up because of age are minimal.
(But we do have a few 18-21 year olds so if the UK had a higher drinking age that could be problematic.)
Minor complaint: It felt like you spent most of the space going over obvious (to me, at least) things like how to use Facebook/Meetup. The only reason I’ve not started a group in my area is because I have no idea what would happen at events. This article did not do much to clarify.
Unrelated: Question: Why do you recommend Facebook, specifically, to start with?
Not the OP, but I’ve run a bunch of events with a college group and we consistently got higher turnout when we used Facebook invites than other methods. I suspect it’s a good way to reach people because everyone checks Facebook all the time and people can see that their friends are going.
Hi. Thanks for the feedback.
EVENTS—To clarify, most of our events are just social events. People turn up at a pub and discuss whatever takes their fancy often including effective altruism. This is low effort but seems to be working.
FACEBOOK—My cop out answer to this is just—this is what I did and it worked for me. (This post is an awkward mix of writing up what I did in a way that could be posted to the EA wiki so that others could edit it and add their advice.) That said the “copy event” feature does make it very very easy to create repeat events with minimal effort until you get round to starting an actual facebook group.
Thanks for replying. Have you run into much issues with underage members not being allowed in pubs?
Most of the pubs in London are happy to have families with young kids come in, and I haven’t seen anyone have their age checked despite being a young looking group.
Even when our events are not in pubs we do not really attract many (if any) under 18s so I suspect the negative impacts of people not being able to turn up because of age are minimal. (But we do have a few 18-21 year olds so if the UK had a higher drinking age that could be problematic.)