Minor point: The two German local groups I’m familiar with focus most on their community of actively engaged people, and I suspect this is true for most other groups (instead of mostly on the „audience“ category).
It is true that there is variety in the groups’ main projects, but the most popular activities the last time we took the data were EA intro events. Also in most groups, there is a “hard core”, but it of the same size as, and sometime smaller than the total number of mildly engaged members. We wrote a post about the demographics in local groups here.
Our data are pre-COVID, though. So at the moment, several groups have paused their outreach activities, but not all, see for instance, this awesome uni course on EA by EA Aachen.
I was surprised not to see former EAF people here, I suppose they have very useful expertise but still decided to fully focus on their new projects.
We consulted former EAF members during our re-structuring phase regarding strategy and organizational structure, and got very useful feedback. Stefan Torges is also an advising member still, but in the past few months we were more focused on implementing our strategy. And I got the sense that they are happy to focus on their new projects, too.
Besides, did you think about organizing local group meetups or an EAGx? I thought it could fit well with your community building goals and I‘ve read about at least one other org making initial plans in case it’ll be possible this year.
The team that planned an EAGx in Berlin last year that was cancelled and turned into the EAGx Virtual last spring, still exists, and signaled interest in giving it another go this year, as far as COVID allows. But they probably prefer to speak for themselves. I also forgot to mention that Manuel Allgaier organized a well-received EA Unconference in August—and if I am up to date he would be doing it again next summer. And in November, Jonathan Michel from EA Bayreuth organized a nation-wide virtual introductory event with a number of local groups attending. So, one reason why we held events at low priority so far was that there are people motivated and skilled to organize larger gatherings.
Another reason is, I believe, that NEAD has a comparative advantage when it comes to long-term coordination between larger groups of people. Events can be well organized in small teams who work together for a limited amount of time, so it may be a good idea to outsource, and play the supportive role by proving access to various resources. Again, I can see us re-evaluate this if, for example, one-shot events turn into regular ones, while the event organizing team composition changes.
I didn‘t totally connect the dots here. Your goal to support scattered chapters with project-based services seems similar enough to startups. A Verein seems to resolve around having members, which doesn‘t seem directly necessary, no? Later you mention democratic oversight over the board, which I’m kind of skeptical about. It seems like you guys actively try to get feedback on your reasoning and strategy and try to be public and transparent about it here, and spontaneously I think this might be going a sufficiently long way for a small new EA org.
This is an ongoing debate in our organization, and I take this as another reminder to finally write a post about it. I admit that I probably have fallen short on explaining the reasons, listing pros and cons etc., in detail here, but I did not want to leave it unmentioned. I would be curious to hear what makes you skeptical about democratic oversight, but if you prefer to read the future post first, I won’t insist on an answer, of course (I won’t anyways).
Thank you for your thorough reading and thoughts, kind words, and encouragement!
Great, and thanks for your replies, makes a lot of sense! :)
I would be curious to hear what makes you skeptical about democratic oversight
I think I generally see little criticism of leadership, so per default I think this just doesn’t happen too much. It takes effort and care to do this well, and seems to have emotional costs to many. Those emotional costs probably get bigger the closer you are to the people who you’re overseeing. I’ve experienced it at least twice within local EA chapters that I and others kind of danced around patterns of behavior that we thought was way less than ideal because it felt (at least to me) aversive to directly criticize somebodies’ behavior when I’m on a friendly basis with them. Another anecdote that comes up, Amnesty International is to my knowledge organized around democratic oversight from its members and some years ago they had a huge leadership crisis including workplace bullying that was only revealed due to a suicide, which was really shocking to me. This had to become as bad as it gets before something happend.
It is true that there is variety in the groups’ main projects, but the most popular activities the last time we took the data were EA intro events. Also in most groups, there is a “hard core”, but it of the same size as, and sometime smaller than the total number of mildly engaged members. We wrote a post about the demographics in local groups here.
Our data are pre-COVID, though. So at the moment, several groups have paused their outreach activities, but not all, see for instance, this awesome uni course on EA by EA Aachen.
We consulted former EAF members during our re-structuring phase regarding strategy and organizational structure, and got very useful feedback. Stefan Torges is also an advising member still, but in the past few months we were more focused on implementing our strategy. And I got the sense that they are happy to focus on their new projects, too.
The team that planned an EAGx in Berlin last year that was cancelled and turned into the EAGx Virtual last spring, still exists, and signaled interest in giving it another go this year, as far as COVID allows. But they probably prefer to speak for themselves. I also forgot to mention that Manuel Allgaier organized a well-received EA Unconference in August—and if I am up to date he would be doing it again next summer. And in November, Jonathan Michel from EA Bayreuth organized a nation-wide virtual introductory event with a number of local groups attending. So, one reason why we held events at low priority so far was that there are people motivated and skilled to organize larger gatherings.
Another reason is, I believe, that NEAD has a comparative advantage when it comes to long-term coordination between larger groups of people. Events can be well organized in small teams who work together for a limited amount of time, so it may be a good idea to outsource, and play the supportive role by proving access to various resources. Again, I can see us re-evaluate this if, for example, one-shot events turn into regular ones, while the event organizing team composition changes.
This is an ongoing debate in our organization, and I take this as another reminder to finally write a post about it. I admit that I probably have fallen short on explaining the reasons, listing pros and cons etc., in detail here, but I did not want to leave it unmentioned. I would be curious to hear what makes you skeptical about democratic oversight, but if you prefer to read the future post first, I won’t insist on an answer, of course (I won’t anyways).
Thank you for your thorough reading and thoughts, kind words, and encouragement!
Great, and thanks for your replies, makes a lot of sense! :)
I think I generally see little criticism of leadership, so per default I think this just doesn’t happen too much. It takes effort and care to do this well, and seems to have emotional costs to many. Those emotional costs probably get bigger the closer you are to the people who you’re overseeing. I’ve experienced it at least twice within local EA chapters that I and others kind of danced around patterns of behavior that we thought was way less than ideal because it felt (at least to me) aversive to directly criticize somebodies’ behavior when I’m on a friendly basis with them. Another anecdote that comes up, Amnesty International is to my knowledge organized around democratic oversight from its members and some years ago they had a huge leadership crisis including workplace bullying that was only revealed due to a suicide, which was really shocking to me. This had to become as bad as it gets before something happend.