1.) What will EA Outreach do, if anything, to coordinate with other people working on marketing EA? Will EA Outreach be transparent, or aim to produce research that is of value to typical EAs? Will there be any attempt to bring forward some “lessons learned”? While I know the Global Priorities Project has done a lot, I feel like there has been incredibly little that an EA can personally use and learn from (though I understand that may not have been the point).
1a. We would like to co-ordinate and collaborate with anyone who is working on marketing EA. Currently the only person we know who is working on this full time is Tyler Alterman from Leverage, and we work so closely with him that he practically feels like part of the team! We will be collaborating closely with LYCS, not least on Peter Singer’s book, and we talk with Giving What We Can on a daily basis. We are teaming up with 80,000 Hours on the EA Fellow’s Programme, and we have been working with CEA to create its own branding that will make it more relevant to the movement as an incubator. We’ve been talking with Tom Ash and looking for ways that we can best collaborate with effectivealtruismhub.org, which hosts many .impact projects. As I mentioned in the plan we have been helping advise FHI on their efforts to make the discussion on AI in the media more accurate. We have also been advising the Norwegian EAs on media strategy, and they’ve been helping us think through movement branding. We’ve been talking with some of the German EAs about their plans to create “superteams” to work on new EA projects. We’ve also been collaborating with the Australian EAs on the EA Forum, and we are currently in conversation with them about their hosting of EA Global. If there are other groups that would like to collaborate with us, I’d love to hear from them!
1b. I won’t speak for the Global Priorities Project (GPP) as I haven’t been working on that project since August and so I’m not so up to date on their current plans. It is worth noting though that Seb Farquhar has been hired from McKinsey to join GPP as its director and project manager, so their plans and outputs may change substantially from January when he starts.
On EA Outreach though, we do indeed plan to write up some of our lessons learned. We have a draft post ready on our learnings from engaging with the media in 2014 that we hope to post soon. You have probably seen my post on what I learned from engaging in policy work earlier this year: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/7e/good_policy_ideas_that_wont_happen_yet/ Writing up these learnings takes quite a lot of time and so we probably won’t be able to share everything we learn, but we try to pass on any particularly useful information to teams that might benefit from it. We love getting questions from different projects and people on their outreach strategies, and I really enjoy talking with all of these projects and helping them think through their work, so if there are people reading this who would be interested in talking through some questions about their EA project then please do get in touch.
Currently the only person we know who is working on this full time is Tyler Alterman from Leverage, and we work so closely with him that he practically feels like part of the team!
Interesting—is what Tyler or Leverage are doing written up anywhere?
We’ve been talking with Tom Ash and looking for ways that we can best collaborate with effectivealtruismhub.org, which hosts many .impact projects.
Likewise interesting—what are the options for this?
We’ve been talking with some of the German EAs about their plans to create “superteams” to work on new EA projects.
Would this be the sort of thing that EA Ventures might fund, or are you imagining slightly different sorts of projects?
Interesting—is what Tyler or Leverage are doing written up anywhere?
Not as of yet. I’ll let Tyler decide when is a good time to write some things up.
Likewise interesting—what are the options for this?
I’m talking to Tom later today. One obvious plan include linking to more .impact projects from effectivealtruism.org .
Would this be the sort of thing that EA Ventures might fund, or are you imagining slightly different sorts of projects?
This could be the sort of thing EA Ventures might fund. I think EA Ventures will be in a position to fund a diverse range of projects including for-profits, nonprofits and projects that are valuable, but too small to be considered a full-fledged startup.
Hi Peter. I’ll be joining GPP in January. Niel and Rob have both said exactly what I’d say on the point of GPP. I’d perhaps add that GPP has been experimenting with a number of avenues towards impact using the outcome of its research. We’ll be deciding exactly what approach seems most promising early in the new year, and that will be really important for shaping the organisation. My current hypothesis is that out biggest comparative advantage as an EA org is in tools for policy rather than for EAs, though obviously many things useful for one can be made useful for the other. From your comment it sounds like you had some specific ideas for things you thought GPP could be bringing to EAs, PM me and I’d love to chat about it.
From your comment it sounds like you had some specific ideas for things you thought GPP could be bringing to EAs, PM me and I’d love to chat about it.
Yeah, that sounds like fun. I’d be happy to expand on this some, but it’s not relevant to the discussion here. It would be good to chat regardless. Feel free to reach me at peter@peterhurford.com.
I think that a lot of what GPP could do is also well covered by GiveWell Labs.
I think a lot of what GPP could do is also well covered by GiveWell Labs.
I absolutely agree with this (and am delighted by it). GPP is likely to look for things which are either very distinct from or complementary to the kind of work OPP does.
Regarding GPP, your expectations from this year have to be calibrated to the fact that GPP only has one dedicated staff member working 0.75 full time equivalents. It has also not had effective altruists as its target demographic, instead focussing on people working on government policy, and academics.
On question one:
1a. We would like to co-ordinate and collaborate with anyone who is working on marketing EA. Currently the only person we know who is working on this full time is Tyler Alterman from Leverage, and we work so closely with him that he practically feels like part of the team! We will be collaborating closely with LYCS, not least on Peter Singer’s book, and we talk with Giving What We Can on a daily basis. We are teaming up with 80,000 Hours on the EA Fellow’s Programme, and we have been working with CEA to create its own branding that will make it more relevant to the movement as an incubator. We’ve been talking with Tom Ash and looking for ways that we can best collaborate with effectivealtruismhub.org, which hosts many .impact projects. As I mentioned in the plan we have been helping advise FHI on their efforts to make the discussion on AI in the media more accurate. We have also been advising the Norwegian EAs on media strategy, and they’ve been helping us think through movement branding. We’ve been talking with some of the German EAs about their plans to create “superteams” to work on new EA projects. We’ve also been collaborating with the Australian EAs on the EA Forum, and we are currently in conversation with them about their hosting of EA Global. If there are other groups that would like to collaborate with us, I’d love to hear from them!
1b. I won’t speak for the Global Priorities Project (GPP) as I haven’t been working on that project since August and so I’m not so up to date on their current plans. It is worth noting though that Seb Farquhar has been hired from McKinsey to join GPP as its director and project manager, so their plans and outputs may change substantially from January when he starts.
On EA Outreach though, we do indeed plan to write up some of our lessons learned. We have a draft post ready on our learnings from engaging with the media in 2014 that we hope to post soon. You have probably seen my post on what I learned from engaging in policy work earlier this year: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/7e/good_policy_ideas_that_wont_happen_yet/ Writing up these learnings takes quite a lot of time and so we probably won’t be able to share everything we learn, but we try to pass on any particularly useful information to teams that might benefit from it. We love getting questions from different projects and people on their outreach strategies, and I really enjoy talking with all of these projects and helping them think through their work, so if there are people reading this who would be interested in talking through some questions about their EA project then please do get in touch.
Interesting—is what Tyler or Leverage are doing written up anywhere?
Likewise interesting—what are the options for this?
Would this be the sort of thing that EA Ventures might fund, or are you imagining slightly different sorts of projects?
Not as of yet. I’ll let Tyler decide when is a good time to write some things up.
I’m talking to Tom later today. One obvious plan include linking to more .impact projects from effectivealtruism.org .
This could be the sort of thing EA Ventures might fund. I think EA Ventures will be in a position to fund a diverse range of projects including for-profits, nonprofits and projects that are valuable, but too small to be considered a full-fledged startup.
Hi Peter. I’ll be joining GPP in January. Niel and Rob have both said exactly what I’d say on the point of GPP. I’d perhaps add that GPP has been experimenting with a number of avenues towards impact using the outcome of its research. We’ll be deciding exactly what approach seems most promising early in the new year, and that will be really important for shaping the organisation. My current hypothesis is that out biggest comparative advantage as an EA org is in tools for policy rather than for EAs, though obviously many things useful for one can be made useful for the other. From your comment it sounds like you had some specific ideas for things you thought GPP could be bringing to EAs, PM me and I’d love to chat about it.
Yeah, that sounds like fun. I’d be happy to expand on this some, but it’s not relevant to the discussion here. It would be good to chat regardless. Feel free to reach me at peter@peterhurford.com.
I think that a lot of what GPP could do is also well covered by GiveWell Labs.
I absolutely agree with this (and am delighted by it). GPP is likely to look for things which are either very distinct from or complementary to the kind of work OPP does.
Regarding GPP, your expectations from this year have to be calibrated to the fact that GPP only has one dedicated staff member working 0.75 full time equivalents. It has also not had effective altruists as its target demographic, instead focussing on people working on government policy, and academics.
Despite that, we have written up our experience with public policy work as mentioned by Niel. I also expect this line of research to be fruitful for effective altruists trying to choose what cause areas to work on: http://www.effective-altruism.com/ea/c4/make_your_own_costeffectiveness_fermi_estimates/. Owen is currently working on publishing a paper on this topic.
Thanks. I feel like this concern of mine is as addressed as well as it can be.