This post is very exciting! I’d be really interested to know:
How did this working group come about?
What was the research process for writing this post?
How have you engaged with stakeholders so far?
What kind of structures have you considered for this working group (e.g. purely professional, or a mix of staff & volunteers?) and which is the ideal one?
How are you planning to manage volunteers?
If you haven’t achieved your 2021 goals, what do you think would be the most likely reason?
Glad you think so! :) Here are some brief answers to your questions:
How did this working group come about? It’s been a very gradual and organic process. An abbreviated version of the story is as follows: In 2019, I pitched the EA Global organizers on organizing an IIDM meetup at the London conference. They agreed, and I ended up co-hosting the event with Tamara Borine and Sam Hilton (who also commented in this thread). Tam and I continued to meet regularly following the conference, and eventually she recruited Vicky and Laura to join us in mid-2020 based on ongoing conversations she’d had with each of them. Tam recently had to take a step back due to other commitments, so the core organizing team is now the three of us.
What was the research process for writing this post? We haven’t really thought of this post as a research post, so I’m not quite sure how to answer the question. I have a personal learning agenda for IIDM-related topics that I’ve been pursuing for the past several years, and drafted the original version of the IIDM definition based on that. The definition was subsequently refined considerably as a result of feedback from our advance readers. The list of initiatives came about as a result of a three-stage voting process our team undertook as an experiment in adapting more formal decision-making methodologies to our internal work; we expect to do more of that as the year goes on and hope to write about it as bandwidth allows.
How have you engaged with stakeholders so far? The feedback process around this post and our stewardship of the IIDM Facebook and Slack communities have been the main activities so far. We also had a round of 1-on-1 conversations with around half a dozen EA leaders in early 2020 to gauge general interest in the cause area. We still have work to do to understand the EA community, but from my perspective the bigger gap is with stakeholders doing IIDM-related work outside of the EA context, whom we have yet to really engage in a formal way.
What kind of structures have you considered for this working group (e.g. purely professional, or a mix of staff & volunteers?) and which is the ideal one? Right now, we are volunteer-driven out of necessity because we think the work is important to move forward but don’t have any funding. I’m not sure if our group/​organization needs to be fully professionalized on a sustained basis, but I think the more resources we have, the more possibilities it opens up. For example, even if we ran out of ways to put the money toward operations, we could set up a regranting fund for IIDM-related initiatives doing valuable work.
How are you planning to manage volunteers? We’ll be hashing out the details of that over the next few weeks, but I imagine that as a general model we’ll determine what work needs to be done associated with each project/​initiative and which tasks we feel comfortable delegating, set up whatever training or documentation needs to be in place in order to position volunteers for success on those tasks, and then match up the people who have expressed interest with the relevant tasks. As we continue to work with folks, we’ll identify those who seem ready and interested in taking on more responsibility, and elevate them to management roles where possible.
If you haven’t achieved your 2021 goals, what do you think would be the most likely reason? Our goals are pretty ambitious for a group of part-time volunteers, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising if we fell short! Lack of funding is a big constraint for us. Since I operate an independent consulting practice, I have the potential to redirect a large portion of my time to this project if we were funded to do so, but as a volunteer there are much tighter limits on the hours I can spare and there’s a bigger risk that I’ll miss deadlines because I have to prioritize paying clients. So that would be the most likely reason.
This post is very exciting! I’d be really interested to know:
How did this working group come about?
What was the research process for writing this post?
How have you engaged with stakeholders so far?
What kind of structures have you considered for this working group (e.g. purely professional, or a mix of staff & volunteers?) and which is the ideal one?
How are you planning to manage volunteers?
If you haven’t achieved your 2021 goals, what do you think would be the most likely reason?
Glad you think so! :) Here are some brief answers to your questions:
How did this working group come about?
It’s been a very gradual and organic process. An abbreviated version of the story is as follows: In 2019, I pitched the EA Global organizers on organizing an IIDM meetup at the London conference. They agreed, and I ended up co-hosting the event with Tamara Borine and Sam Hilton (who also commented in this thread). Tam and I continued to meet regularly following the conference, and eventually she recruited Vicky and Laura to join us in mid-2020 based on ongoing conversations she’d had with each of them. Tam recently had to take a step back due to other commitments, so the core organizing team is now the three of us.
What was the research process for writing this post?
We haven’t really thought of this post as a research post, so I’m not quite sure how to answer the question. I have a personal learning agenda for IIDM-related topics that I’ve been pursuing for the past several years, and drafted the original version of the IIDM definition based on that. The definition was subsequently refined considerably as a result of feedback from our advance readers. The list of initiatives came about as a result of a three-stage voting process our team undertook as an experiment in adapting more formal decision-making methodologies to our internal work; we expect to do more of that as the year goes on and hope to write about it as bandwidth allows.
How have you engaged with stakeholders so far?
The feedback process around this post and our stewardship of the IIDM Facebook and Slack communities have been the main activities so far. We also had a round of 1-on-1 conversations with around half a dozen EA leaders in early 2020 to gauge general interest in the cause area. We still have work to do to understand the EA community, but from my perspective the bigger gap is with stakeholders doing IIDM-related work outside of the EA context, whom we have yet to really engage in a formal way.
What kind of structures have you considered for this working group (e.g. purely professional, or a mix of staff & volunteers?) and which is the ideal one?
Right now, we are volunteer-driven out of necessity because we think the work is important to move forward but don’t have any funding. I’m not sure if our group/​organization needs to be fully professionalized on a sustained basis, but I think the more resources we have, the more possibilities it opens up. For example, even if we ran out of ways to put the money toward operations, we could set up a regranting fund for IIDM-related initiatives doing valuable work.
How are you planning to manage volunteers?
We’ll be hashing out the details of that over the next few weeks, but I imagine that as a general model we’ll determine what work needs to be done associated with each project/​initiative and which tasks we feel comfortable delegating, set up whatever training or documentation needs to be in place in order to position volunteers for success on those tasks, and then match up the people who have expressed interest with the relevant tasks. As we continue to work with folks, we’ll identify those who seem ready and interested in taking on more responsibility, and elevate them to management roles where possible.
If you haven’t achieved your 2021 goals, what do you think would be the most likely reason?
Our goals are pretty ambitious for a group of part-time volunteers, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising if we fell short! Lack of funding is a big constraint for us. Since I operate an independent consulting practice, I have the potential to redirect a large portion of my time to this project if we were funded to do so, but as a volunteer there are much tighter limits on the hours I can spare and there’s a bigger risk that I’ll miss deadlines because I have to prioritize paying clients. So that would be the most likely reason.