Such an interesting project! Thank you for organising it and sharing your findings.
The part that I was the most surprised about in that half of the participants were AIS researchers already working in the field. Do you know what their main motivation was behind joining the event? (Also happy to hear it directly from AIS researchers who attended the unconference and happen to see this comment!)
The reason I’m surprised is due to the following assumption about such researchers (simplified and exaggerated for the sake of clarity):
They already are connected to other researchers or can easily connect to them and exchange high-quality ideas e.g. in London (since we are talking about researchers in Europe) -- What motivates them to attend an unconference in Germany instead, especially with a lot of junior people (who might have a lot of terrible/obvious ideas)?
I think part of it is that networking is relatively hits-based: Most new connections don’t make much difference, but meeting someone who is a good fit for collaboration or who gives you access to an opportunity can be really valuable. I don’t think most researchers have hit diminishing returns on networking yet. Even if you already know 200 people in the field, getting to know 10 more out of which one is an “impactful connection” can make a big difference. For me it has also often made a difference to meet someone I already know again and get to know them better, and that ended up making a big difference for me.
or can easily connect to them
I think it’s actually (relatively) hard to connect to people even if you have a decent network. If you want to meet someone new you can get an intro and then have a call with them, but I think there is a lot of friction to that, and it feels like you need a reason to do so. Meeting people at an event has a lot less “social overhead”. If you want to talk to someone you just walk over and see how it goes, and if it’s not productive you walk off again.
especially with a lot of junior people (who might have a lot of terrible/obvious ideas)
I’m not sure if “finding it useless to talk to junior people who have terrible or obvious ideas” is a problem people have? I didn’t find anyone at the retreat “too junior” to be interesting to talk to (even though with different people the conversational dynamic would be more skewed towards me giving vs receiving advice depending on the other’s experience level, but that seems fine to me). And if someone does find it uninteresting to talk to someone with less experience, they can still just end the conversation. Actually we had an explicit norm that it is perfectly okay to end conversations or leave sessions if you don’t think they are the best use of your time at the moment.
Excellent considerations! One of the reasons I assumed more senior people would not want to talk with more junior ones is because you keep hearing that AIS is mentor-constrained. However, your description made me update more towards the potential high value of these low-friction, “small social overhead” networking opportunities. Thanks a lot for the insights!
Such an interesting project! Thank you for organising it and sharing your findings.
The part that I was the most surprised about in that half of the participants were AIS researchers already working in the field. Do you know what their main motivation was behind joining the event? (Also happy to hear it directly from AIS researchers who attended the unconference and happen to see this comment!)
The reason I’m surprised is due to the following assumption about such researchers (simplified and exaggerated for the sake of clarity):
They already are connected to other researchers or can easily connect to them and exchange high-quality ideas e.g. in London (since we are talking about researchers in Europe) -- What motivates them to attend an unconference in Germany instead, especially with a lot of junior people (who might have a lot of terrible/obvious ideas)?
I think part of it is that networking is relatively hits-based: Most new connections don’t make much difference, but meeting someone who is a good fit for collaboration or who gives you access to an opportunity can be really valuable. I don’t think most researchers have hit diminishing returns on networking yet. Even if you already know 200 people in the field, getting to know 10 more out of which one is an “impactful connection” can make a big difference. For me it has also often made a difference to meet someone I already know again and get to know them better, and that ended up making a big difference for me.
I think it’s actually (relatively) hard to connect to people even if you have a decent network. If you want to meet someone new you can get an intro and then have a call with them, but I think there is a lot of friction to that, and it feels like you need a reason to do so. Meeting people at an event has a lot less “social overhead”. If you want to talk to someone you just walk over and see how it goes, and if it’s not productive you walk off again.
I’m not sure if “finding it useless to talk to junior people who have terrible or obvious ideas” is a problem people have? I didn’t find anyone at the retreat “too junior” to be interesting to talk to (even though with different people the conversational dynamic would be more skewed towards me giving vs receiving advice depending on the other’s experience level, but that seems fine to me). And if someone does find it uninteresting to talk to someone with less experience, they can still just end the conversation. Actually we had an explicit norm that it is perfectly okay to end conversations or leave sessions if you don’t think they are the best use of your time at the moment.
Excellent considerations! One of the reasons I assumed more senior people would not want to talk with more junior ones is because you keep hearing that AIS is mentor-constrained. However, your description made me update more towards the potential high value of these low-friction, “small social overhead” networking opportunities. Thanks a lot for the insights!