Sorry if this is only tangentially relevant, but I honestly think more courses, discussion groups, and especially virtual programs could benefit from using the EA Gather Town for their sessions. This doesn’t suit everyone, of course, but I think there are a lot of people for whom it would be optimal on the margin. I would be happy to help with this in any way I can.[1] Get in touch if you’re interested. : )
Yellow hosted some unofficial intro course cohorts here, and one of them became a regular coworker, and several others have returned to the space every now and then. (Yellow actually invited the students and hosted the courses on their own initiative, and they made a guide! Needless to say, Yellow is pretty awesome.)
One-off events that people travel to are really great for inspiration, learning seriously, and strong connections. But there are significant obstacles to keeping up those connections after people return home to their daily routines. The environments (locale, incentives, activities) where they made the connections are often very different from their habitual environments where they’d have to find a way to maintain the connections. If they live far apart, they might not be the kind of people who have much bandwidth for communicating online, so the connection fades despite wanting to keep in touch.
For fostering long-term high-communication connections between EAs, I suspect local or online activities are underexplored. Events that are more specifically optimised for kickstarting a perpetual social activity (e.g. coworking, or regular meetups in a place they can always return to) for those who want it seem more likely to enable people to keep in touch, and EA Gather is great for that. Probably locally hosted activities work too, but I don’t know much about them.
Either me or any of the other stewards could give quick intro tours to newcomers on e.g. how to connect with others via the space, community norms, benefits of coworking, etc. We could also build out or customise the space for what people want to use it for, but we have plenty of space so we might already have what you need for what you want to do.
Sorry if this is only tangentially relevant, but I honestly think more courses, discussion groups, and especially virtual programs could benefit from using the EA Gather Town for their sessions. This doesn’t suit everyone, of course, but I think there are a lot of people for whom it would be optimal on the margin. I would be happy to help with this in any way I can.[1] Get in touch if you’re interested. : )
Yellow hosted some unofficial intro course cohorts here, and one of them became a regular coworker, and several others have returned to the space every now and then. (Yellow actually invited the students and hosted the courses on their own initiative, and they made a guide! Needless to say, Yellow is pretty awesome.)
One-off events that people travel to are really great for inspiration, learning seriously, and strong connections. But there are significant obstacles to keeping up those connections after people return home to their daily routines. The environments (locale, incentives, activities) where they made the connections are often very different from their habitual environments where they’d have to find a way to maintain the connections. If they live far apart, they might not be the kind of people who have much bandwidth for communicating online, so the connection fades despite wanting to keep in touch.
For fostering long-term high-communication connections between EAs, I suspect local or online activities are underexplored. Events that are more specifically optimised for kickstarting a perpetual social activity (e.g. coworking, or regular meetups in a place they can always return to) for those who want it seem more likely to enable people to keep in touch, and EA Gather is great for that. Probably locally hosted activities work too, but I don’t know much about them.
Either me or any of the other stewards could give quick intro tours to newcomers on e.g. how to connect with others via the space, community norms, benefits of coworking, etc. We could also build out or customise the space for what people want to use it for, but we have plenty of space so we might already have what you need for what you want to do.