Great summary! Regarding location selection, one thing to keep in mind is that selecting based on existing concentrations of interest is likely to have self-reinforcing effects. With any conference, a significant percentage of the attendees are likely to come from the local area, and it stands to reason that those attendees are, on average, likely to have a looser or more casual connection to the community than those who have traveled from far away. That’s a big reason why many industry and association conferences choose to alternate time zones, or continents, every year. Otherwise, you might risk unintentionally fostering a strong regional bias to community growth over time.
Thanks! This is an important point that we are also considering.
When I produced the Singularity Summits we alternated between NY and SF. For EA Global, it is hard to say what the right decision is. We hope that having a number EAGx events in different cities will help build communities outside of our most heavily concentrated areas. At the same time, we want to draw from different pools for the large gathering as well. We plan to have a number of team discussions about this question over the next month, and also plan to consider feedback from the survey form.
My guess is that after 4 years of the main event being in the Bay, it’s worth mixing it up and moving it to either Boston, NY or the UK next year. Then someone can organise an unusually large EAGx in the Bay.
Great summary! Regarding location selection, one thing to keep in mind is that selecting based on existing concentrations of interest is likely to have self-reinforcing effects. With any conference, a significant percentage of the attendees are likely to come from the local area, and it stands to reason that those attendees are, on average, likely to have a looser or more casual connection to the community than those who have traveled from far away. That’s a big reason why many industry and association conferences choose to alternate time zones, or continents, every year. Otherwise, you might risk unintentionally fostering a strong regional bias to community growth over time.
Thanks! This is an important point that we are also considering.
When I produced the Singularity Summits we alternated between NY and SF. For EA Global, it is hard to say what the right decision is. We hope that having a number EAGx events in different cities will help build communities outside of our most heavily concentrated areas. At the same time, we want to draw from different pools for the large gathering as well. We plan to have a number of team discussions about this question over the next month, and also plan to consider feedback from the survey form.
My guess is that after 4 years of the main event being in the Bay, it’s worth mixing it up and moving it to either Boston, NY or the UK next year. Then someone can organise an unusually large EAGx in the Bay.
Boston and the UK have the biggest EA communities outside the Bay Area, so this seems eminently sensible.
+1 for NY! :)