I’m sorry you had this experience. I’m glad you’re doing better, were able to put names to some of what happened, and shared it here.
I did not have the exact same experience, but I did have a week of retreats pre-EAG. By Monday, I was too tired to maintain a conversation with my travel partner and I have spent most of the week catching up on sleep and feeling uncharacteristically antisocial.
Two actionable ideas:
Although it makes sense logistically to pair EAG(x)s with retreats and other events, spacing them out might be better. At a minimum, we should implement Manuel’s idea of a break of one or two days in between, but I worry that even with that people will want to maximize time together and still fill those days. This might be especially true if we keep having a “conference season” — there were just three large conferences back to back!
Explicitly encouraging people to use Swapcard (or another more functional app lol) year-round might take some of the pressure off for irl 1-1s. Many people delete the app once the conference is over, but it can serve as a longer-term EA networking platform and take some of the pressure off to maximize connections over the course of three days.
Yes to Swapcard all year round!! People didn’t reply to my messages from Sunday evening, but I guess it’s solvable as most people have their emails there.
I’m sorry you had this experience. I’m glad you’re doing better, were able to put names to some of what happened, and shared it here.
I did not have the exact same experience, but I did have a week of retreats pre-EAG. By Monday, I was too tired to maintain a conversation with my travel partner and I have spent most of the week catching up on sleep and feeling uncharacteristically antisocial.
Two actionable ideas:
Although it makes sense logistically to pair EAG(x)s with retreats and other events, spacing them out might be better. At a minimum, we should implement Manuel’s idea of a break of one or two days in between, but I worry that even with that people will want to maximize time together and still fill those days. This might be especially true if we keep having a “conference season” — there were just three large conferences back to back!
Explicitly encouraging people to use Swapcard (or another more functional app lol) year-round might take some of the pressure off for irl 1-1s. Many people delete the app once the conference is over, but it can serve as a longer-term EA networking platform and take some of the pressure off to maximize connections over the course of three days.
Yes to Swapcard all year round!! People didn’t reply to my messages from Sunday evening, but I guess it’s solvable as most people have their emails there.