One approach is to run an experiment. You choose a number of similar cities and then randomly increase the number of meetups and talks in one of them. Then you measure, e.g. whether this translates into more members in the local EA FB group (provided such a group exists), more people at physical meetings, etc. (I’m sure there are other ways to measure this; that’s just off the top of my head.)
Such an experiment could also be used to test the much-discussed idea of whether fast growth is risky. If it turns out that the faster-growing chapters cause problems in some way, that might be a reason to think that the EA movement should not grow fast, or at least that it should not try to grow fast using the method used in the experiment. If, on the other hand, they don’t cause any problems, that is a reason for the movement to try to grow faster. (I favour faster growth, I should add.)
One approach is to run an experiment. You choose a number of similar cities and then randomly increase the number of meetups and talks in one of them. Then you measure, e.g. whether this translates into more members in the local EA FB group (provided such a group exists), more people at physical meetings, etc. (I’m sure there are other ways to measure this; that’s just off the top of my head.)
Such an experiment could also be used to test the much-discussed idea of whether fast growth is risky. If it turns out that the faster-growing chapters cause problems in some way, that might be a reason to think that the EA movement should not grow fast, or at least that it should not try to grow fast using the method used in the experiment. If, on the other hand, they don’t cause any problems, that is a reason for the movement to try to grow faster. (I favour faster growth, I should add.)