Upvoted. As for any post of this length, Iād recommend a bullet-point summary at the top, alongside any action items youād like readers to take.
Iām enthusiastic about the idea of a project platform. The EA survey might be a good place to gather data on whatās out there (plus whatever info people upload directly to the site).
My impression is that most projects donāt have lasting impact outside of skill-building, but a few volunteer-founded initiatives (the EA Newsletter, the Giving Tuesday Project) have really impressed me, and Iām sure there are good projects I havenāt discovered yet.
Thatās a great idea, Iāll include a summary with action items on future long posts. Do you think I should edit a summary into the current post?
I hadnāt considered using the EA Survey as a data gathering mechanism. My initial thought is that the survey administrators might not want to include project-related questions in the survey because it might be beyond the scope of the survey, add a lot of additional questions to the survey, and not apply to many respondents. Did you have something specific in mind about what adding project-related info to the survey would look like?
Perhaps the word āprojectā has a different connotation than I intended. Weāre seeking to support the highest impact early ventures, and included in that classification would be the past early-stage versions of every currently existing EA organization. Do you think a different term would be appropriate? The naming is very much a work in progress; I was thinking of the EA Initiatives Platform, EA Coordination Platform, or simply the Altruism.vc Platform among many potential names.
The EA Angel Group has received proposals that would match āstartupā more than āproject.ā The majority of proposals have already received funding prior to applying to us, have teams actively working on the proposal, and have some degree of traction.
Yes, I definitely endorse editing summaries into long posts, both to help future readers and to establish good norms for other posters! :-)
For the EA Survey note, I was responding to this part of your post:
It may be the case that an even broader platform that applies to the entire EA community, encompassing all community members and EA organizations, would be even better for increasing the impact of the effective altruism movement.
I donāt know whether the Survey would welcome questions about projects, but you could ask. Iām thinking of something like: āHave you ever worked on an independent/āvolunteer EA project that wasnāt run by a larger EA organization, whether or not the project is still going?ā, and then, if they say āyesā, a link to a spreadsheet/āform where they can add some details. The exact wording of the question will be determined by the way you decide to define āprojectā.
The purpose of a survey question would be to catch lesser-known projects, including some that failedāthere are still lessons to learn in those cases. Gathering data on something like the early history of currently successful orgs would look very different, I imagine.
Upvoted. As for any post of this length, Iād recommend a bullet-point summary at the top, alongside any action items youād like readers to take.
Iām enthusiastic about the idea of a project platform. The EA survey might be a good place to gather data on whatās out there (plus whatever info people upload directly to the site).
My impression is that most projects donāt have lasting impact outside of skill-building, but a few volunteer-founded initiatives (the EA Newsletter, the Giving Tuesday Project) have really impressed me, and Iām sure there are good projects I havenāt discovered yet.
Thatās a great idea, Iāll include a summary with action items on future long posts. Do you think I should edit a summary into the current post?
I hadnāt considered using the EA Survey as a data gathering mechanism. My initial thought is that the survey administrators might not want to include project-related questions in the survey because it might be beyond the scope of the survey, add a lot of additional questions to the survey, and not apply to many respondents. Did you have something specific in mind about what adding project-related info to the survey would look like?
Perhaps the word āprojectā has a different connotation than I intended. Weāre seeking to support the highest impact early ventures, and included in that classification would be the past early-stage versions of every currently existing EA organization. Do you think a different term would be appropriate? The naming is very much a work in progress; I was thinking of the EA Initiatives Platform, EA Coordination Platform, or simply the Altruism.vc Platform among many potential names.
The EA Angel Group has received proposals that would match āstartupā more than āproject.ā The majority of proposals have already received funding prior to applying to us, have teams actively working on the proposal, and have some degree of traction.
Yes, I definitely endorse editing summaries into long posts, both to help future readers and to establish good norms for other posters! :-)
For the EA Survey note, I was responding to this part of your post:
I donāt know whether the Survey would welcome questions about projects, but you could ask. Iām thinking of something like: āHave you ever worked on an independent/āvolunteer EA project that wasnāt run by a larger EA organization, whether or not the project is still going?ā, and then, if they say āyesā, a link to a spreadsheet/āform where they can add some details. The exact wording of the question will be determined by the way you decide to define āprojectā.
The purpose of a survey question would be to catch lesser-known projects, including some that failedāthere are still lessons to learn in those cases. Gathering data on something like the early history of currently successful orgs would look very different, I imagine.