One thing I’d really like to see is more experimentation inside the community.
For example, there was some discussion about democratic control of funding decisions. This isn’t something we need to centrally decide, you can just… start doing it. Start a fund that makes decisions democratically! I bet you’d get funding from the EAIF even.
Got a great idea for how to set up codes of conduct to make diverse people feel welcome? Try them in your local group and report back on how they work!
I wish people felt more empowered to do this kind of thing. That’s how we got our existing organisations and institutions: someone just went ahead and started doing it. They weren’t created when Dustin Moskovitz arose out of the sea on a shell. Maybe e.g. the EAIF could explicitly call out experimentation as something it wants to fund.
Of course, this argument only applies to stuff you can do differently. If you don’t like the way other people behave and just don’t want to be associated with them, that’s harder to reconcile.
As someone who is a funded community builder part time, it’s extremely difficult to do this kind of work. Community building is extremely competitive to get funding, and running a local group takes a lot out of you. Plus the career/funding situation is precarious and not exactly great for setting up a lucrative career path, so unfortunately I think a lot of people see community building as a temporary position or a means to getting more clout in EA.
This is especially true of university organizers since by the nature of their position, they will only be organizing temporarily.
I’d like the community building movement, especially the paid organizers, to coordinate more. I think that if we could have an annual meetup country by country, perhaps people could coordinate and piece out larger projects—for example a group of 5 paid organizers could pool some funds or work on building an ethics framework together.
EA generally has an issue where people say “if this is a problem, why don’t you go do it?” I think if we focused more on coordinating and letting people solve problems as a group, we could get a lot more done.
I don’t mean to discount your experience, but from my experience something like running a small democratically allocated fund seems pretty doable by a single person as a fun side project with some spreadsheets (probably less work than writing a 20000 word critical essay...). If you want to get serious, sure, the work ramps up. But the point is to find out whether people are interested in a low cost way.
EA generally has an issue where people say “if this is a problem, why don’t you go do it?”
I think we are probably sensitive to different things :) I feel like I see a lot more people saying “why doesn’t Someone (usually ‘the EA movement’, which isn’t, you know, an agent) just implement my pet idea?”. Probably people say both :upside-down-smile:
I organize part time while also working full time as the head of sales at a tech startup. I really don’t have time to coordinate this type of thing, but if I could contribute a few hours a month here or there I’d be happy to do it.
The problem is most people don’t have the skillset to do sales, build spreadsheets, and identify funds. It takes either an incredibly talented person with a lot of time, or a group with different skills complementing each other.
One thing I’d really like to see is more experimentation inside the community.
For example, there was some discussion about democratic control of funding decisions. This isn’t something we need to centrally decide, you can just… start doing it. Start a fund that makes decisions democratically! I bet you’d get funding from the EAIF even.
Got a great idea for how to set up codes of conduct to make diverse people feel welcome? Try them in your local group and report back on how they work!
I wish people felt more empowered to do this kind of thing. That’s how we got our existing organisations and institutions: someone just went ahead and started doing it. They weren’t created when Dustin Moskovitz arose out of the sea on a shell. Maybe e.g. the EAIF could explicitly call out experimentation as something it wants to fund.
Of course, this argument only applies to stuff you can do differently. If you don’t like the way other people behave and just don’t want to be associated with them, that’s harder to reconcile.
As someone who is a funded community builder part time, it’s extremely difficult to do this kind of work. Community building is extremely competitive to get funding, and running a local group takes a lot out of you. Plus the career/funding situation is precarious and not exactly great for setting up a lucrative career path, so unfortunately I think a lot of people see community building as a temporary position or a means to getting more clout in EA.
This is especially true of university organizers since by the nature of their position, they will only be organizing temporarily.
I’d like the community building movement, especially the paid organizers, to coordinate more. I think that if we could have an annual meetup country by country, perhaps people could coordinate and piece out larger projects—for example a group of 5 paid organizers could pool some funds or work on building an ethics framework together.
EA generally has an issue where people say “if this is a problem, why don’t you go do it?” I think if we focused more on coordinating and letting people solve problems as a group, we could get a lot more done.
I don’t mean to discount your experience, but from my experience something like running a small democratically allocated fund seems pretty doable by a single person as a fun side project with some spreadsheets (probably less work than writing a 20000 word critical essay...). If you want to get serious, sure, the work ramps up. But the point is to find out whether people are interested in a low cost way.
I think we are probably sensitive to different things :) I feel like I see a lot more people saying “why doesn’t Someone (usually ‘the EA movement’, which isn’t, you know, an agent) just implement my pet idea?”. Probably people say both :upside-down-smile:
I organize part time while also working full time as the head of sales at a tech startup. I really don’t have time to coordinate this type of thing, but if I could contribute a few hours a month here or there I’d be happy to do it.
The problem is most people don’t have the skillset to do sales, build spreadsheets, and identify funds. It takes either an incredibly talented person with a lot of time, or a group with different skills complementing each other.