Thank you for all your amazing work in connecting people to make the world a better place. I have some feedback on the following:
âWe expect applications for the other conferences to open approximately 2 months before the eventâ
After the pandemic, visa admissions have slowed down quite significantly. âPriority Serviceâ option for UK visas wasnât available when I applied for a visa for the EAGx Oxford in 2021. A friend of mine has waited 6 weeks until he received his UK visa, which is not so uncommon. Similarly, earliest tourist visa appointment I can get from US embassy is for 2024. If applicants from countries with âweakerâ passports were allowed to apply earlier, that would help with accessibility and inclusivity.
The conferences youâre referring to are all EAGx events which primarily serve the region the conference is based in. This means the organisers arenât expecting many applicants to require visas. Earlier this year, before we had confirmed more conferences around the world, serving more of the community, we accepted some people to events like EAGxOxford from further afield.
Applications for EA Global will open much earlier for this reason, though that wonât solve the problem for the US.
We know that, even with long application timelines, visas are just very difficult for some people to get for some countries. Timelines arenât the only problem; we see lots of visa rejections too. Weâre hoping to run more events like EAGxVirtual and EAGxSingapore, which are more accessible to those people and weâre improving our visa process to make applications stronger and ensure theyâre processed faster.
All to say, weâre working on making these events more accessible, but weâre not nailing it yet.
I am glad to learn that applications for EAG London will open much earlier, that wasnât clear to me from the text. For me that solves much of the problem.
I understand that there must be operational costs of opening admissions much earlier and you have to balance many trade-offs. I just wanted to signal this issue so that it can be taken into account in your decision-making. I think you are doing a great job, thank you for everything!
Thank you for all your amazing work in connecting people to make the world a better place. I have some feedback on the following:
âWe expect applications for the other conferences to open approximately 2 months before the eventâ
After the pandemic, visa admissions have slowed down quite significantly. âPriority Serviceâ option for UK visas wasnât available when I applied for a visa for the EAGx Oxford in 2021. A friend of mine has waited 6 weeks until he received his UK visa, which is not so uncommon. Similarly, earliest tourist visa appointment I can get from US embassy is for 2024. If applicants from countries with âweakerâ passports were allowed to apply earlier, that would help with accessibility and inclusivity.
Yeah, thanks for raising this!
The conferences youâre referring to are all EAGx events which primarily serve the region the conference is based in. This means the organisers arenât expecting many applicants to require visas. Earlier this year, before we had confirmed more conferences around the world, serving more of the community, we accepted some people to events like EAGxOxford from further afield.
Applications for EA Global will open much earlier for this reason, though that wonât solve the problem for the US.
We know that, even with long application timelines, visas are just very difficult for some people to get for some countries. Timelines arenât the only problem; we see lots of visa rejections too. Weâre hoping to run more events like EAGxVirtual and EAGxSingapore, which are more accessible to those people and weâre improving our visa process to make applications stronger and ensure theyâre processed faster.
All to say, weâre working on making these events more accessible, but weâre not nailing it yet.
I am glad to learn that applications for EAG London will open much earlier, that wasnât clear to me from the text. For me that solves much of the problem.
I understand that there must be operational costs of opening admissions much earlier and you have to balance many trade-offs. I just wanted to signal this issue so that it can be taken into account in your decision-making. I think you are doing a great job, thank you for everything!
Thanks Emre!