Thanks for sharing this, it does seem good to have transparency into this stuff.
My gut reaction was “huh, I’m surprised about how large a proportion of these people (maybe 30-50%, depending on how you count it) I don’t recall substantially interacting with” (where by “interaction” I include reading their writings).
To be clear, I’m not trying to imply that it should be higher; that any particular mistakes are being made; or that these people should have interacted with me. It just felt surprising (given how long I’ve been floating around EA) and worth noting as a datapoint. (Though one reason to take this with a grain of salt is that I do forget names and faces pretty easily.)
Note that we have a few attendees at this year’s event who are specialists in one of our focus areas rather than leaders of an EA meta organization or team (though some attendees are both).
We were not trying to optimise the attendee list for connectedness or historical engagement with the community, but rather who can contribute to making progress on our core themes; brand and funding. When you see what roles these attendees have, I think it’s fairly evident why we invited them, given this lens.
I’ll also note that I think it’s healthy for there to be people joining for this event who haven’t bene in the community as long as you have. They can bring new perspectives, and offer expertise the community / organisational leaders has been lacking.
Thanks for sharing this, it does seem good to have transparency into this stuff.
My gut reaction was “huh, I’m surprised about how large a proportion of these people (maybe 30-50%, depending on how you count it) I don’t recall substantially interacting with” (where by “interaction” I include reading their writings).
To be clear, I’m not trying to imply that it should be higher; that any particular mistakes are being made; or that these people should have interacted with me. It just felt surprising (given how long I’ve been floating around EA) and worth noting as a datapoint. (Though one reason to take this with a grain of salt is that I do forget names and faces pretty easily.)
Thanks! I think this note explains the gap:
We were not trying to optimise the attendee list for connectedness or historical engagement with the community, but rather who can contribute to making progress on our core themes; brand and funding. When you see what roles these attendees have, I think it’s fairly evident why we invited them, given this lens.
I’ll also note that I think it’s healthy for there to be people joining for this event who haven’t bene in the community as long as you have. They can bring new perspectives, and offer expertise the community / organisational leaders has been lacking.