Last year, there were three (or four?) official events in Mountain View, Basel, Oxford and Switzerland. This year, the only official event was in Berekeley. I understand coordinating the 20-ish(?) EAGx events this year would’ve been too difficult if it had all been planned by just one team like last year. Hoever, I never got why there wasn’t at least one other event that was centrally coordinated, like one in Oxford. Like, I too am sure Ben is a great EAGx coordinator as well, but my point is having a team, likeone or more people dedicated full-time to organizing an event, is a surer way it goes off without a hitch. Like, generally, if someone is dedicated to organizing an event as there only top priority, you can expect more care will go into planning it. So, you can scale it more. It seems to me there’s so many EAs in Europe, an event could be hosted there just as big as EAG in Berkeley this year.
There could be a separate team paid to work full-time to organize just as big an event in Europe. They’d need to be paid salaries or as contractors, which could be a big added expense. However, it seems holding an additional big event in Europe (or at least in two different locations) creates lots of added value for people who can now attend with mostly mitigated travel expenses. Also, you could have multiple >500-attendee events without the financial costs and logisitical headaches unique To organizing 1000+ -attendee events. So, you could end up saving money, and charging lower ticket prices, this allowing even more local people to attend.
Another possibility is volunteer organizers who did an astounding job with bigger EAGx events in 2016 could receive (more) funding to throw events with more people, higher-quality programming and/or more marketing in 2017. This way, more people would be able to attend a top-notch event at lower cost to themselves, without anyone on any events team having the coordination challenges that come with the biggest of conferences. I’m assuming as events scale in attendance numbers, finding a venue to fit everyone becomes harder. I expect something like this needs to happen at some point anyway because EA will continually be spread out across the whole world. This would require raising more funds for more one or more professional events teams, but I think the community would find it given the case for extraordinary added value to increase the total number of EAG-event attendees around the world by, say, 50-100% over 2016.
Now that we have a dedicated Events Team, we are considering additional in-person events. Things currently under discussion are EA Salons, EA Global Reunions, additional large scale events in various locations with different focuses (for example, one that is more curated and one that is like a convention or unconference), and provision of greater support for EAGx teams so that they can improve their own events.
One concern we have with the idea of hosting multiple large and substantially similar EA Global events is that we expect that fewer people will come to the main event or to the nearby EAGx events in different locations (for example, we have heard concerns that the plans for a large EAGx Oxford might cause fewer attendees in some of the other EAGx conferences in Europe). Also, the financial and logistical costs of hosting an event do not scale linearly. So, hosting two 500+ person events would add a large amount of additional work for the team, and many of the large costs, such as AV, venue, and speaker costs, would remain mostly the same (unless we reduced the complexity and content in addition to the number of attendees).
Update: after comparing the location data alongside the attendee and registration data and also considering the location survey results and other factors, we are leaning towards having three distinct events. It remains true that this will likely be more expensive for CEA, but, it seems that it is likely worth the cost on balance.
I will post more extensively on this soon and hope to firm up the locations in the next few weeks. We are tentatively thinking of Boston / Cambridge, London / Oxford, and the Bay Area spread out over many months, possibly with one in the spring, one in the summer, and one in the fall.
To be clear, we haven’t made a final plan. As a team, we’re having discussions about additional in-person events because we’re trying to be sure we’re not missing something that we should consider. I would be happy to hear thoughts about which of the options sound most appealing, and will also consider other suggestions.
Last year, there were three (or four?) official events in Mountain View, Basel, Oxford and Switzerland. This year, the only official event was in Berekeley. I understand coordinating the 20-ish(?) EAGx events this year would’ve been too difficult if it had all been planned by just one team like last year. Hoever, I never got why there wasn’t at least one other event that was centrally coordinated, like one in Oxford. Like, I too am sure Ben is a great EAGx coordinator as well, but my point is having a team, likeone or more people dedicated full-time to organizing an event, is a surer way it goes off without a hitch. Like, generally, if someone is dedicated to organizing an event as there only top priority, you can expect more care will go into planning it. So, you can scale it more. It seems to me there’s so many EAs in Europe, an event could be hosted there just as big as EAG in Berkeley this year.
There could be a separate team paid to work full-time to organize just as big an event in Europe. They’d need to be paid salaries or as contractors, which could be a big added expense. However, it seems holding an additional big event in Europe (or at least in two different locations) creates lots of added value for people who can now attend with mostly mitigated travel expenses. Also, you could have multiple >500-attendee events without the financial costs and logisitical headaches unique To organizing 1000+ -attendee events. So, you could end up saving money, and charging lower ticket prices, this allowing even more local people to attend.
Another possibility is volunteer organizers who did an astounding job with bigger EAGx events in 2016 could receive (more) funding to throw events with more people, higher-quality programming and/or more marketing in 2017. This way, more people would be able to attend a top-notch event at lower cost to themselves, without anyone on any events team having the coordination challenges that come with the biggest of conferences. I’m assuming as events scale in attendance numbers, finding a venue to fit everyone becomes harder. I expect something like this needs to happen at some point anyway because EA will continually be spread out across the whole world. This would require raising more funds for more one or more professional events teams, but I think the community would find it given the case for extraordinary added value to increase the total number of EAG-event attendees around the world by, say, 50-100% over 2016.
Have either of these options been considered?
Now that we have a dedicated Events Team, we are considering additional in-person events. Things currently under discussion are EA Salons, EA Global Reunions, additional large scale events in various locations with different focuses (for example, one that is more curated and one that is like a convention or unconference), and provision of greater support for EAGx teams so that they can improve their own events.
One concern we have with the idea of hosting multiple large and substantially similar EA Global events is that we expect that fewer people will come to the main event or to the nearby EAGx events in different locations (for example, we have heard concerns that the plans for a large EAGx Oxford might cause fewer attendees in some of the other EAGx conferences in Europe). Also, the financial and logistical costs of hosting an event do not scale linearly. So, hosting two 500+ person events would add a large amount of additional work for the team, and many of the large costs, such as AV, venue, and speaker costs, would remain mostly the same (unless we reduced the complexity and content in addition to the number of attendees).
Sounds like you should keep doing what you’re planning anyway. Thanks for responding.
Update: after comparing the location data alongside the attendee and registration data and also considering the location survey results and other factors, we are leaning towards having three distinct events. It remains true that this will likely be more expensive for CEA, but, it seems that it is likely worth the cost on balance.
I will post more extensively on this soon and hope to firm up the locations in the next few weeks. We are tentatively thinking of Boston / Cambridge, London / Oxford, and the Bay Area spread out over many months, possibly with one in the spring, one in the summer, and one in the fall.
To be clear, we haven’t made a final plan. As a team, we’re having discussions about additional in-person events because we’re trying to be sure we’re not missing something that we should consider. I would be happy to hear thoughts about which of the options sound most appealing, and will also consider other suggestions.