What should the content split at EAGxUtrecht[1] be? Below is our first stab. One of our subgoals is to inspire people to start new projects, hence the heavy focus on entrepreneurship under ‘Meta’.
Yeah, I don’t like the terms ‘neartermism’ and ‘longtermism’ either, and it’s messy, but this is our attempt at organising things. We used RP’s 2022 survey’s categorisation of the two to guide us, with some small modifications.
How many talks are you expecting to have? These seem very prescriptive, and things like multiple 1% categories will be difficult to achieve if you have <100 talks. I would worry that a strict focus on distribution like this would lead to having to sacrifice quality.
Given that EAGx Utrecht might be the most convenient EAGx for a good chunk of Western Europe, I’m not sure how important it is to have a goal for a % speakers with strong Dutch connections rather than Europe connections. But the density of talented Dutch folk in the community is very high, so you might hit 35% without any specific goal to do so.
Out of curiosity, why do you think this is the case? Isn’t the Berlin and Nordics conference (and the London EAG) much more accessible for most EAs in Western Europe?
(Also, personally I assumed that the 35% was not a goal but a maximum to make sure the speakers are not from the Netherlands too much.)
Firstly, population density. There are about 15 million people within 100km of Utrecht, this compares to 6 million for Berlin and 4 million for Copenhagen.
Secondly, location. Berlin is actually quite far East, I’d say it’s more Central Europe than it is Western Europe. And obviously Copenhagen is more Northern European. This means that, whereas Utrecht is an afternoon’s train ride from some of the biggest Western European metropoles (London, Brussels, and Paris), the equivalent journeys to CPH/BER are 8+ hours.
Thirdly, air connectivity. Schiphol scores much higher on direct connectivity than both CPH and BER. To sense check this, I just Googled flight frequency for Rome. AMS has about 180 per month whilst BER and CPH have around 80 per month.
You know much more than I do, but I would be surprised if these were the most relevant factors.
People within 100km of Utrecht are still mostly in the Netherlands, or at least are likely to have a strong Dutch connection.
2. I know a surprising amount of people interested in these events really value limiting their flights for environmental reasons, so this might be true.
3. Berlin is extremely well-connected. I don’t think anyone didn’t go to EAGx Berlin for lack of flights. If anything, plane tickets from Rome, Milan and Paris are slightly cheaper for Berlin vs Schiphol.
In my limited experience, the two most important factors for the people who get the most value from these conferences are:
Timing: people are busy, so they might e.g. have to defend their PhD thesis on the same day of EAGx (real example)
Acceptance rates: for some people from Italy who just went through an intro program, either Berlin, Rotterdam/Utrecht, or Nordics could be the most convenient because they wouldn’t get accepted into the others
In any case, I would expect people who find Utrecht more convenient than other EAGxs for whatever reason will also find opportunities presented by Dutch-connected speakers more valuable than the typical EAGx participant, so it might make sense to lean into that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ideal number were higher than 35%.
Given all the things going on with e.g. The School For Moral Ambition and Doneer Effectief, I would also consider whether having Netherlands-specific events would make sense. Posssibly in the spirit of making EA more decentralized, like environmentalism.
But I guess all the above depends heavily on what % of participants live near the Netherlands, do you know the percentage of people from NL/BE for EAGxRotterdam 2022? (Although that was a while ago).
Just to be clear, I was attempting to answer @EffectiveAdvocate’s question about why one might think Utrecht is probably the most accessible location for many EAs in Western Europe. I wasn’t making this point to defend the 35% figure :)
I wanted to make the point about accessibility because I’m quite certain it isn’t the case that Berlin and Copenhagen are much more accessible than Utrecht, and I worry some people will underrate Utrecht’s accessibility and therefore choose not to come.
I agree timing is probably a more important determiner of attendance than accessibility, that the quality of the speaker should probably be the most important factor when choosing, and I think Catherine makes a very good point about extending our partiality beyond NL.
Re your Q about the national residencies of attendees in 2022, all I have to hand is the following:
Sounds good overall. 1% each for priorities, cb and giving seems pretty low. 1.75% for mental health might also be on the low side, as there appears to be quite a bit of interest for global mental health in NL. I think the focus on entrepreneurship is great!
As a side note, I think content split is important, but the quality of presentation / group discussion and people that are leading those is more important. Obviously there needs to be a decent content split, but if you have the opportunity to get many really great people presenting great things in one area, I wouldn’t necessarily cut some because it exceeds your “content percent budget” or whatever.
I haven’t organised these kinds of events though, so this comment might not be relevent/helpful.
This is a tough one, overall it looks good! My general point of feedback would be to be more cause-agnostic OR put higher emphasis on “priorities research”. For example I could suggest making 1/5th content about priorities research, promoting it as a category of its own, as seen below. The reason for this is because I would argue that cause areas & meta have their own communities/conferences already, priorities research on the other hand may not so much. And priorities research represents EA’s mission of “where to allocate resources to do the most good” most holistically. Then again I haven’t done the thinking you have behind these weights! It may be worth making a survey with 1-100 scales?
I believe the division of areas for the event is quite decent. However, I think EAGx events also allow for the introduction of new ideas into the EA community. What cause areas do others believe we should prioritize but currently do not? Personally, I am considering areas like protecting liberal democracy, improving decision-making (individual and institutional), and addressing great power conflicts (broader than AI and nuclear issues). There are likely many other areas, and the causes I’ve listed here are already somewhat related to EA. Perhaps there are topics that are further outside the box.
I am also somewhat uncertain about the term “Entrepreneurship skills.” Could someone clarify what is meant by this exactly?
What should the content split at EAGxUtrecht[1] be? Below is our first stab. One of our subgoals is to inspire people to start new projects, hence the heavy focus on entrepreneurship under ‘Meta’.
Neartermist[2] 35%
Global Health & Dev 35%
Animal welfare 60%
Mental health 5%
Longtermist 45%
AI risk 50%
Biosec 30%
Nuclear 10%
General longtermist 5%
Climate change 5%
Meta 20%
Priorities research 5%
Entrepreneurship skills 85%
Community building 5%
Effective giving 5%
Gender split of speakers: 50:50
Proportion of speakers with a strong Dutch connection: 35%
July 5-7 - be there or be square. Or be there and do square things like check out the world’s largest bicycle garage. You do you.
Yeah, I don’t like the terms ‘neartermism’ and ‘longtermism’ either, and it’s messy, but this is our attempt at organising things. We used RP’s 2022 survey’s categorisation of the two to guide us, with some small modifications.
How many talks are you expecting to have? These seem very prescriptive, and things like multiple 1% categories will be difficult to achieve if you have <100 talks. I would worry that a strict focus on distribution like this would lead to having to sacrifice quality.
Given that EAGx Utrecht might be the most convenient EAGx for a good chunk of Western Europe, I’m not sure how important it is to have a goal for a % speakers with strong Dutch connections rather than Europe connections. But the density of talented Dutch folk in the community is very high, so you might hit 35% without any specific goal to do so.
Out of curiosity, why do you think this is the case? Isn’t the Berlin and Nordics conference (and the London EAG) much more accessible for most EAs in Western Europe?
(Also, personally I assumed that the 35% was not a goal but a maximum to make sure the speakers are not from the Netherlands too much.)
Three factors I’d say.
Firstly, population density. There are about 15 million people within 100km of Utrecht, this compares to 6 million for Berlin and 4 million for Copenhagen.
Secondly, location. Berlin is actually quite far East, I’d say it’s more Central Europe than it is Western Europe. And obviously Copenhagen is more Northern European. This means that, whereas Utrecht is an afternoon’s train ride from some of the biggest Western European metropoles (London, Brussels, and Paris), the equivalent journeys to CPH/BER are 8+ hours.
Thirdly, air connectivity. Schiphol scores much higher on direct connectivity than both CPH and BER. To sense check this, I just Googled flight frequency for Rome. AMS has about 180 per month whilst BER and CPH have around 80 per month.
You know much more than I do, but I would be surprised if these were the most relevant factors.
People within 100km of Utrecht are still mostly in the Netherlands, or at least are likely to have a strong Dutch connection.
2. I know a surprising amount of people interested in these events really value limiting their flights for environmental reasons, so this might be true.
3. Berlin is extremely well-connected. I don’t think anyone didn’t go to EAGx Berlin for lack of flights. If anything, plane tickets from Rome, Milan and Paris are slightly cheaper for Berlin vs Schiphol.
In my limited experience, the two most important factors for the people who get the most value from these conferences are:
Timing: people are busy, so they might e.g. have to defend their PhD thesis on the same day of EAGx (real example)
Acceptance rates: for some people from Italy who just went through an intro program, either Berlin, Rotterdam/Utrecht, or Nordics could be the most convenient because they wouldn’t get accepted into the others
In any case, I would expect people who find Utrecht more convenient than other EAGxs for whatever reason will also find opportunities presented by Dutch-connected speakers more valuable than the typical EAGx participant, so it might make sense to lean into that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ideal number were higher than 35%.
Given all the things going on with e.g. The School For Moral Ambition and Doneer Effectief, I would also consider whether having Netherlands-specific events would make sense. Posssibly in the spirit of making EA more decentralized, like environmentalism.
But I guess all the above depends heavily on what % of participants live near the Netherlands, do you know the percentage of people from NL/BE for EAGxRotterdam 2022? (Although that was a while ago).
And I strongly agree with Nick that the quality is more important
Just to be clear, I was attempting to answer @EffectiveAdvocate’s question about why one might think Utrecht is probably the most accessible location for many EAs in Western Europe. I wasn’t making this point to defend the 35% figure :)
I wanted to make the point about accessibility because I’m quite certain it isn’t the case that Berlin and Copenhagen are much more accessible than Utrecht, and I worry some people will underrate Utrecht’s accessibility and therefore choose not to come.
I agree timing is probably a more important determiner of attendance than accessibility, that the quality of the speaker should probably be the most important factor when choosing, and I think Catherine makes a very good point about extending our partiality beyond NL.
Re your Q about the national residencies of attendees in 2022, all I have to hand is the following:
41% living in the Netherlands
14% living in Germany
Thanks for your input so far!
Sounds good overall. 1% each for priorities, cb and giving seems pretty low. 1.75% for mental health might also be on the low side, as there appears to be quite a bit of interest for global mental health in NL. I think the focus on entrepreneurship is great!
Thanks for your thoughts Jelle!
As a side note, I think content split is important, but the quality of presentation / group discussion and people that are leading those is more important. Obviously there needs to be a decent content split, but if you have the opportunity to get many really great people presenting great things in one area, I wouldn’t necessarily cut some because it exceeds your “content percent budget” or whatever.
I haven’t organised these kinds of events though, so this comment might not be relevent/helpful.
Thanks!
Hi James thanks for opening this up for feedback,
This is a tough one, overall it looks good!
My general point of feedback would be to be more cause-agnostic OR put higher emphasis on “priorities research”. For example I could suggest making 1/5th content about priorities research, promoting it as a category of its own, as seen below.
The reason for this is because I would argue that cause areas & meta have their own communities/conferences already, priorities research on the other hand may not so much. And priorities research represents EA’s mission of “where to allocate resources to do the most good” most holistically. Then again I haven’t done the thinking you have behind these weights!
It may be worth making a survey with 1-100 scales?
Neartermist 30% (-5)
Global Health & Dev 35%
Animal welfare 60%
Mental health 5%
Longtermist 40% (-5)
AI risk 50%
Biosec 30%
Nuclear 10%
General longtermist 5%
Climate change 5%
Priorities research 20%
Meta 10% (-10)
Priorities research 5%Entrepreneurship skills 85%
Community building 5%
Effective giving 5%
I believe the division of areas for the event is quite decent. However, I think EAGx events also allow for the introduction of new ideas into the EA community. What cause areas do others believe we should prioritize but currently do not? Personally, I am considering areas like protecting liberal democracy, improving decision-making (individual and institutional), and addressing great power conflicts (broader than AI and nuclear issues). There are likely many other areas, and the causes I’ve listed here are already somewhat related to EA. Perhaps there are topics that are further outside the box.
I am also somewhat uncertain about the term “Entrepreneurship skills.” Could someone clarify what is meant by this exactly?