We are using PISE’s intro fellowship for EA Utrecht right now and as a facilitator I have no complaints so far! It seems likely to me that the shorter duration has indeed lead to more sign-ups, though we’d have to add a question about this on the feedback form to test this.
Regarding the compulsory nature of the fellowship to join the group, to what extent do you recommend this to new groups whose first priority probably is to find enough people that are interested in order to get the ball rolling? I imagine a solid chunk of people showing up to EA Utrecht’s events right now would have left if the fellowship was compulsory to become a member.
In my experience the first year of PISE (when a fellowship was not mandatory) there were quite a few students in PISE that did not know the EA basics or that were not EA aligned. This lead to some difficulties in the organization of events in terms of the organizers being EA aligned and it made it difficult to determine how in-depth events could be. Therefore, I would still recommend a mandatory fellowship to starting groups (that have a member structure) in places where EA is not well known yet. I think I would prefer a situation of only having a few members that understand EA and are aligned above having a lot of members that do not understand EA well. However, I would start doing this as part of a recruitment round at the beginning of the year (not the end) when people still have the time. I do get that this might lead to potentially missing very promising members that just don’t have the time. To mitigate this, I think you could tell people to contact you if a fellowship does not work for them but are really interested in joining. That way you could come to a solution together. For example, if someone is really motivated to research EA on their own or go through the fellowship manual in there own time, I think they could still join.
Additionally, students at PISE that could not join a fellowship, were not motivated to research EA on their own, and did not have EA knowledge already (and thus could not become a member) could still join events that do not require previous EA knowledge. This way they can still get more intro knowledge about EA which might motivate them to join a fellowship or research EA more in their own time. I don’t think you should be exclusive to members in all events you organize. However, to guard event quality (if you start working with the same “committee” structure of most Dutch universities and not just have the board organize events) and stimulate knowledge gain of members, I do think “committee members” or members attending in-depth discussion evenings should have previous EA knowledge through a fellowship or there own research.
We are using PISE’s intro fellowship for EA Utrecht right now and as a facilitator I have no complaints so far! It seems likely to me that the shorter duration has indeed lead to more sign-ups, though we’d have to add a question about this on the feedback form to test this.
Regarding the compulsory nature of the fellowship to join the group, to what extent do you recommend this to new groups whose first priority probably is to find enough people that are interested in order to get the ball rolling? I imagine a solid chunk of people showing up to EA Utrecht’s events right now would have left if the fellowship was compulsory to become a member.
In my experience the first year of PISE (when a fellowship was not mandatory) there were quite a few students in PISE that did not know the EA basics or that were not EA aligned. This lead to some difficulties in the organization of events in terms of the organizers being EA aligned and it made it difficult to determine how in-depth events could be. Therefore, I would still recommend a mandatory fellowship to starting groups (that have a member structure) in places where EA is not well known yet. I think I would prefer a situation of only having a few members that understand EA and are aligned above having a lot of members that do not understand EA well. However, I would start doing this as part of a recruitment round at the beginning of the year (not the end) when people still have the time. I do get that this might lead to potentially missing very promising members that just don’t have the time. To mitigate this, I think you could tell people to contact you if a fellowship does not work for them but are really interested in joining. That way you could come to a solution together. For example, if someone is really motivated to research EA on their own or go through the fellowship manual in there own time, I think they could still join.
Additionally, students at PISE that could not join a fellowship, were not motivated to research EA on their own, and did not have EA knowledge already (and thus could not become a member) could still join events that do not require previous EA knowledge. This way they can still get more intro knowledge about EA which might motivate them to join a fellowship or research EA more in their own time. I don’t think you should be exclusive to members in all events you organize. However, to guard event quality (if you start working with the same “committee” structure of most Dutch universities and not just have the board organize events) and stimulate knowledge gain of members, I do think “committee members” or members attending in-depth discussion evenings should have previous EA knowledge through a fellowship or there own research.
I hope that answers your question.