The members there could ask things like “I want to talk to someone about patent law as a career” or “Can you connect me to an EA who has thought about the decision to have a child”. The group members would either offer to talk themselves or select the best person to talk to outside the group. This is simply a way of making it easier to get people to connect people to other people. This mechanism isn’t working very well for use because we are so widely distributed. I’ve offered this connection service before and the demand hasn’t been huge, but the connections made seem quite useful.
This would have various advantages over existing approches:
Projects on a separate website get less traffic than facebook, which everyone already uses.
Existing groups are clearly not being used to facilitate conversations (although they could!). Especially not by the kinds of people I would like to get more connected. I have my doubts that these groups will be used for the purpose in question, but am happy to be proved wrong. Many people seem to need a space where it is explicitly encouraged to ask to talk to strangers over Skype in order for them to actually feel safe doing it.
The group wouldn’t need to have many members: It is enough if the members collectively know most of the movement so they can set up the person who wants talk with the right conversation partner.
If this fails, it’s a cheap experiment. It might also help us learn about the pitfalls and the kinds of needs out there to find better ways of accommodating them.
I think it’s more promising to have people connect people to other people. Approaches of the type ‘everyone lists their skills’ rely on everyone actually filling everything in. They require you to update continuously. They don’t help you find the best person when there are multiple candidates. Real people can do all that and even have a sense of who has time and who doesn’t.
Drawbacks:
Some people find it annoying to have more facebook groups. As someone who is not annoyed I’m currently unsure how much more annoying that would be than having fewer with more going on, so I wonder what others think. A counter point would be that only the people who want to be involved in this group need to be.
People who are not as well-connected may still be unaware of the group or hesitant to post there.
I ran an experiment where I offered to find people conversation partners about their topic in question and it didn’t get that many requests.
It might just end up not being used like other attempts.
Issues I forgot?
Data points:
More well-connected EAs I’ve talked to seem to be in favor of using existing venues while new people have been excited to have a ‘safe space’ where it’s encouraged to ask for a connection.
I’ve started this “EA Careers and 80,000 Hours Discussion” group on Facebook. It’s primary purpose is for individuals to take advatange of the effective altruism and 80,000 Hours members networks to ask or offer questions or advice about how to making career decisions. That may cover much of what you’re looking for here. It’s existed for just over a week, and it already has 270 members.
I think this group is useful by encouraging more people to ask for careers advice and I’m already using it. It doesn’t however encourage people ask for a connection. That’s the part that not so well-connected people are often not comfortable with doing in the existing groups.
Yeah, my tacit goal of starting the group is get all the people who could or would offer the best advice, or are the most well-connected within effective altruism so they can point newcomers to other experts they know, would be in one place so we could convince them all at once to use the new resources on the Effective Altruism Hub, like the “what can you offer” section, and the integration of Skillshare, when they’ve been completed. The Facebook group acts as an interim resource until we have a better system to connect others.
Go ahead and create an additional Facebook group to meet the other goals you made in the OP, if you think it’s worth it.
I’d be happy to create this if people want it. Just don’t want to annoy the ones I talked to who say we have too many fb groups. So if anyone is for or against this let me know via a comment or vote.
[Creating a dedicated facebook group]
The members there could ask things like “I want to talk to someone about patent law as a career” or “Can you connect me to an EA who has thought about the decision to have a child”. The group members would either offer to talk themselves or select the best person to talk to outside the group. This is simply a way of making it easier to get people to connect people to other people. This mechanism isn’t working very well for use because we are so widely distributed. I’ve offered this connection service before and the demand hasn’t been huge, but the connections made seem quite useful.
This would have various advantages over existing approches:
Projects on a separate website get less traffic than facebook, which everyone already uses.
Existing groups are clearly not being used to facilitate conversations (although they could!). Especially not by the kinds of people I would like to get more connected. I have my doubts that these groups will be used for the purpose in question, but am happy to be proved wrong. Many people seem to need a space where it is explicitly encouraged to ask to talk to strangers over Skype in order for them to actually feel safe doing it. The group wouldn’t need to have many members: It is enough if the members collectively know most of the movement so they can set up the person who wants talk with the right conversation partner.
If this fails, it’s a cheap experiment. It might also help us learn about the pitfalls and the kinds of needs out there to find better ways of accommodating them.
I think it’s more promising to have people connect people to other people. Approaches of the type ‘everyone lists their skills’ rely on everyone actually filling everything in. They require you to update continuously. They don’t help you find the best person when there are multiple candidates. Real people can do all that and even have a sense of who has time and who doesn’t.
Drawbacks:
Some people find it annoying to have more facebook groups. As someone who is not annoyed I’m currently unsure how much more annoying that would be than having fewer with more going on, so I wonder what others think. A counter point would be that only the people who want to be involved in this group need to be.
People who are not as well-connected may still be unaware of the group or hesitant to post there.
I ran an experiment where I offered to find people conversation partners about their topic in question and it didn’t get that many requests.
It might just end up not being used like other attempts.
Issues I forgot?
Data points:
More well-connected EAs I’ve talked to seem to be in favor of using existing venues while new people have been excited to have a ‘safe space’ where it’s encouraged to ask for a connection.
I’ve started this “EA Careers and 80,000 Hours Discussion” group on Facebook. It’s primary purpose is for individuals to take advatange of the effective altruism and 80,000 Hours members networks to ask or offer questions or advice about how to making career decisions. That may cover much of what you’re looking for here. It’s existed for just over a week, and it already has 270 members.
I think this group is useful by encouraging more people to ask for careers advice and I’m already using it. It doesn’t however encourage people ask for a connection. That’s the part that not so well-connected people are often not comfortable with doing in the existing groups.
Yeah, my tacit goal of starting the group is get all the people who could or would offer the best advice, or are the most well-connected within effective altruism so they can point newcomers to other experts they know, would be in one place so we could convince them all at once to use the new resources on the Effective Altruism Hub, like the “what can you offer” section, and the integration of Skillshare, when they’ve been completed. The Facebook group acts as an interim resource until we have a better system to connect others.
Go ahead and create an additional Facebook group to meet the other goals you made in the OP, if you think it’s worth it.
I’d be happy to create this if people want it. Just don’t want to annoy the ones I talked to who say we have too many fb groups. So if anyone is for or against this let me know via a comment or vote.