In my experience, running local group events was like an o-ring process. If you’re running a talk, you need to get the marketing right, the operations right, and the follow up right. If you miss any of these, you lose most of the value. This means that having an organiser who is really careful about each stage can dramatically increase the impact of the group. So, I’d highlight ‘really caring’ as one of the key traits to have.
I think one-off talks can be powerful, but they have to be combined with one-on-one follow up, or otherwise funnelling people into a fellowship etc. We did a lot of this in the early days and found a lot of great people like this. One-off talks should be optimised for marketing & reach, to find people for the more in-depth programmes.
I feel a bit uneasy about encouraging people to live together. It sometimes works well (& I’ve done it), but it can also lead to drama (e.g. romantic entanglements), a loss of work-life balance / ability to separate your doing good life from your personal life, and for people to lose their friends outside of EA, and I have think having a social network outside of EA is really valuable. One option is just to do it for 1-2yr as a way of making deeper friendships.
I agree a career focused pitch seems most attractive—that was part of why we set up 80k in the first place :) I hope we can create some better resources for the local groups to use, like the next version of key ideas (turned into a series of articles more like the old career guide), and eventually a better career-focused book.
Great points, thanks for commenting Ben! Responding to each of the points:
In my experience, running local group events was like an o-ring process. If you’re running a talk, you need to get the marketing right, the operations right, and the follow up right. If you miss any of these, you lose most of the value. This means that having an organiser who is really careful about each stage can dramatically increase the impact of the group. So, I’d highlight ‘really caring’ as one of the key traits to have.
I think I mostly agree with this (and strongly agree that ‘really caring’ is a key trait to have—I imagine that comes across in the post but perhaps stating it more clearly would be beneficial). I’m not sure we’d disagree on this, but I do think aggressive 80/20ing often makes sense, rather than being a perfectionist (e.g. it’s probably fine not to do follow up with everyone who participates in your fellowship/comes to your intro talk, but you need to do good follow up with the few people who seem most likely to get get highly involved/be very impactful). Maybe that’s what you meant by doing things “right” in the first place though, in which case there’s no disagreement.
I think one-off talks can be powerful, but they have to be combined with one-on-one follow up, or otherwise funnelling people into a fellowship etc. We did a lot of this in the early days and found a lot of great people like this. One-off talks should be optimised for marketing & reach, to find people for the more in-depth programmes.
I agree. One thing I forgot to mention in the post that I’ll add in after this comment (although it is already a novel rip :P) is that Mauricio and I spent a bunch of time trying to make our Intro to EA presentation as good as possible (script and slides here—the slides could definitely look much better), and I give it each quarter to get people to sign up for our fellowship and offer 1:1s with anyone at the event who’s interested. I think making a good intro to EA presentation is one of the highest value things I’ve done in the last year. Thanks for bringing this up!
I feel a bit uneasy about encouraging people to live together. It sometimes works well (& I’ve done it), but it can also lead to drama (e.g. romantic entanglements), a loss of work-life balance / ability to separate your doing good life from your personal life, and for people to lose their friends outside of EA, and I have think having a social network outside of EA is really valuable. One option is just to do it for 1-2yr as a way of making deeper friendships.
Interesting, I guess in the context of student life living with friends is quite normal, and my guess is the upsides (largely becoming better friends, learning a lot about EA, seeing how dedicated EAs lead their daily lives) tend to outweigh the downsides, but of course this depends a lot on the specifics of the person, who they’re living with, for how long, etc.
I agree a career focused pitch seems most attractive—that was part of why we set up 80k in the first place :) I hope we can create some better resources for the local groups to use, like the next version of key ideas (turned into a series of articles more like the old career guide), and eventually a better career-focused book.
These all sound amazing—I can’t wait, and would love to help out where I can. Thanks for all your work starting and running 80K, it’s how I first found EA (when I googled something like “Highest Impact Careers”), and I’ve been hooked ever since. Keep up the incredible work, the value you’re providing to students (and others/the world) is tremendous! :)
I should have clarified my points weren’t meant as disagreements—I think we’re basically on the same page.
I do think aggressive 80/20ing often makes sense
Yes, I agree. One way to reconcile the two comments is that you need to focus on the 20% of most valuable activities within each aspect (marketing, ops, follow up), but you can’t drop any aspect. I also agree that it’s likely that ‘really focusing on what drives impact’ is more important than ‘really caring’, though I think simply caring and trying can go a fairly long way.
On living together, I’m not concerned about living with friends in general (esp for students), just the idea of living 100% with EAs, while EA is also your main thing outside of studying. The more general point is that I think it’s valuable to have friendships outside of EA. So, if someone is new to EA, I might encourage them to live with EAs for a few years to make deeper friendships there, but if someone is already heavily involved, I might encourage them to live with people who aren’t in EA.
The intro to EA talk looks cool! I made some comments on a copy that I’ve shared with your stanford email address.
Thinking out loud / random comments:
In my experience, running local group events was like an o-ring process. If you’re running a talk, you need to get the marketing right, the operations right, and the follow up right. If you miss any of these, you lose most of the value. This means that having an organiser who is really careful about each stage can dramatically increase the impact of the group. So, I’d highlight ‘really caring’ as one of the key traits to have.
I think one-off talks can be powerful, but they have to be combined with one-on-one follow up, or otherwise funnelling people into a fellowship etc. We did a lot of this in the early days and found a lot of great people like this. One-off talks should be optimised for marketing & reach, to find people for the more in-depth programmes.
I feel a bit uneasy about encouraging people to live together. It sometimes works well (& I’ve done it), but it can also lead to drama (e.g. romantic entanglements), a loss of work-life balance / ability to separate your doing good life from your personal life, and for people to lose their friends outside of EA, and I have think having a social network outside of EA is really valuable. One option is just to do it for 1-2yr as a way of making deeper friendships.
I agree a career focused pitch seems most attractive—that was part of why we set up 80k in the first place :) I hope we can create some better resources for the local groups to use, like the next version of key ideas (turned into a series of articles more like the old career guide), and eventually a better career-focused book.
Great points, thanks for commenting Ben! Responding to each of the points:
I think I mostly agree with this (and strongly agree that ‘really caring’ is a key trait to have—I imagine that comes across in the post but perhaps stating it more clearly would be beneficial). I’m not sure we’d disagree on this, but I do think aggressive 80/20ing often makes sense, rather than being a perfectionist (e.g. it’s probably fine not to do follow up with everyone who participates in your fellowship/comes to your intro talk, but you need to do good follow up with the few people who seem most likely to get get highly involved/be very impactful). Maybe that’s what you meant by doing things “right” in the first place though, in which case there’s no disagreement.
I agree. One thing I forgot to mention in the post that I’ll add in after this comment (although it is already a novel rip :P) is that Mauricio and I spent a bunch of time trying to make our Intro to EA presentation as good as possible (script and slides here—the slides could definitely look much better), and I give it each quarter to get people to sign up for our fellowship and offer 1:1s with anyone at the event who’s interested. I think making a good intro to EA presentation is one of the highest value things I’ve done in the last year. Thanks for bringing this up!
Interesting, I guess in the context of student life living with friends is quite normal, and my guess is the upsides (largely becoming better friends, learning a lot about EA, seeing how dedicated EAs lead their daily lives) tend to outweigh the downsides, but of course this depends a lot on the specifics of the person, who they’re living with, for how long, etc.
These all sound amazing—I can’t wait, and would love to help out where I can. Thanks for all your work starting and running 80K, it’s how I first found EA (when I googled something like “Highest Impact Careers”), and I’ve been hooked ever since. Keep up the incredible work, the value you’re providing to students (and others/the world) is tremendous! :)
That’s great to hear!
I should have clarified my points weren’t meant as disagreements—I think we’re basically on the same page.
Yes, I agree. One way to reconcile the two comments is that you need to focus on the 20% of most valuable activities within each aspect (marketing, ops, follow up), but you can’t drop any aspect. I also agree that it’s likely that ‘really focusing on what drives impact’ is more important than ‘really caring’, though I think simply caring and trying can go a fairly long way.
On living together, I’m not concerned about living with friends in general (esp for students), just the idea of living 100% with EAs, while EA is also your main thing outside of studying. The more general point is that I think it’s valuable to have friendships outside of EA. So, if someone is new to EA, I might encourage them to live with EAs for a few years to make deeper friendships there, but if someone is already heavily involved, I might encourage them to live with people who aren’t in EA.
The intro to EA talk looks cool! I made some comments on a copy that I’ve shared with your stanford email address.