Tl;dr: In order to create the best possible version of the hub, we’ll delay the launch to spring/summer 2023.
For anyone who is curious about the reasons, here you go. I’ll split the writeup into two categories: External reasons, and internal ones.
External reasons
Launching a charity in Germany takes time: The process has been set in motion two months ago but could still take six more months. It doesn’t make sense for us to continue the search for houses before we have a registered charity with a provably full bank account. We’ve already found a house that would have been perfect for our purpose, but landlords are (for obvious reasons) unkeen to rent properties to not-yet-existent charities backed by anonymous crypto donors.
The recent crypto crash hit one of our two funders badly. While he is still committed to help make this project happen, we need some time to sort things out and see whether crypto recovers and whether it makes sense for us to get additional seed funding. Our first year of operations is still covered if necessary. However, it would be good to sustain our seed funder’s capability to start projects longer term and give him the opportunity to withdraw our promised funding at a point in time when it hurts less.
Internal reasons
For the last six months, we’ve largely taken one step after the other and re-evaluated all the levers and gears of the project week by week. This made sense because the project is huge and unconventional and has few precedents. There were hundreds of conversations to be had so we’d be able to bump into a satisfying number of the relevant unknown unknowns. Hadn’t we continually gone bigger and more public over the last months, we’d probably not have been in the position to have most of these conversations.
By now, the road forward is sufficiently mapped out that we’ll want to switch from “explore” to “exploit” mode. At the same time, it’s clear that actually taking the time for the “exploit” phase will make a huge difference for the quality of the project. Here are some reasons why:
We want sufficient time to draft, correct, and perfect some key documents and processes. This includes policies for the house and how to enforce them, and legally binding and adequate contracts for future resident fellows. First and foremost, it includes finally finishing our doc on downside risks (and how to mitigate them), which has been on hold for a while.
The founder effect is a thing. If fellows self-select for non-relevant traits at the start of the project, we’ll end up with an imbalanced community. Because people feel most comfortable among their kin and because our reputation will travel, it will be way harder to correct such a mistake after the launch rather than before. I have identified two ways in which my current skill set might exert suboptimal selection pressure:
Before picking up this project, I optimized my facilitation toolbox for communication training and self-development workshops—something that is only interesting and relevant for parts of the EA community. If I were to bring only this skillset into the community, that would serve our plan of creating an impact- rather than self-development-focused intentional community quite imperfectly. In particular, it might lead to more self-development focused EAs feeling particularly welcome, while the rest decides the hub is not the place for them. I’d like to prevent this by enriching my toolbox with workshops on career planning, applied rationality, and research support already before I fully operate under The Berlin Hub’s brand and roof. (By the way: I’m very open for suggestions on which tools to learn and teach. If you have any ideas or even want to collaborate, shoot me a message.)
Before picking up this project, I optimized my facilitation toolbox for a target audience that is far above average in liking routines and structures. I personally *love* regular rituals like “Alright, let’s all sit down in a circle and answer these prompts together: 1) What went well during my last week? 2) What went badly? 3) What have I learned? 4) Which adjustments do I want to make for next week?” For others, having this as a regular feature of the house would be merely bearable or even pure kryptonite. I want to make sure to create a community that feels welcoming not only to me and copies of myself, but also to people who are quite dissimilar. This requires me to learn a more minimal and flexible approach to facilitating group processes. So to speak, I’ve mastered the Krav Maga of facilitation over the last years, but for leading a healthy community, I’ll have to pick up the Aikido of facilitation as well. This, too, will require some deliberate practice.
So, what’s next?
Laura is still doing ops remotely, but she is focusing full time on becoming a professional retreat organizer in the Bay Area this summer. I will facilitate as many workshops and retreats as possible over the next months for the Berlin area EA and rationalist communities (and sometimes in other locations) in order to fill the mentioned skill gaps. Feel free to reach out if you have ideas for workshops you’d want to see more often. Reach out as well if you’d like to collaborate on this, particularly if you are keen to help with operations.
As always, questions and comments are very welcome.
Tl;dr: In order to create the best possible version of the hub, we’ll delay the launch to spring/summer 2023.
For anyone who is curious about the reasons, here you go. I’ll split the writeup into two categories: External reasons, and internal ones.
External reasons
Launching a charity in Germany takes time: The process has been set in motion two months ago but could still take six more months. It doesn’t make sense for us to continue the search for houses before we have a registered charity with a provably full bank account. We’ve already found a house that would have been perfect for our purpose, but landlords are (for obvious reasons) unkeen to rent properties to not-yet-existent charities backed by anonymous crypto donors.
The recent crypto crash hit one of our two funders badly. While he is still committed to help make this project happen, we need some time to sort things out and see whether crypto recovers and whether it makes sense for us to get additional seed funding. Our first year of operations is still covered if necessary. However, it would be good to sustain our seed funder’s capability to start projects longer term and give him the opportunity to withdraw our promised funding at a point in time when it hurts less.
Internal reasons
For the last six months, we’ve largely taken one step after the other and re-evaluated all the levers and gears of the project week by week. This made sense because the project is huge and unconventional and has few precedents. There were hundreds of conversations to be had so we’d be able to bump into a satisfying number of the relevant unknown unknowns. Hadn’t we continually gone bigger and more public over the last months, we’d probably not have been in the position to have most of these conversations.
By now, the road forward is sufficiently mapped out that we’ll want to switch from “explore” to “exploit” mode. At the same time, it’s clear that actually taking the time for the “exploit” phase will make a huge difference for the quality of the project. Here are some reasons why:
We want sufficient time to draft, correct, and perfect some key documents and processes. This includes policies for the house and how to enforce them, and legally binding and adequate contracts for future resident fellows. First and foremost, it includes finally finishing our doc on downside risks (and how to mitigate them), which has been on hold for a while.
The founder effect is a thing. If fellows self-select for non-relevant traits at the start of the project, we’ll end up with an imbalanced community. Because people feel most comfortable among their kin and because our reputation will travel, it will be way harder to correct such a mistake after the launch rather than before. I have identified two ways in which my current skill set might exert suboptimal selection pressure:
Before picking up this project, I optimized my facilitation toolbox for communication training and self-development workshops—something that is only interesting and relevant for parts of the EA community. If I were to bring only this skillset into the community, that would serve our plan of creating an impact- rather than self-development-focused intentional community quite imperfectly. In particular, it might lead to more self-development focused EAs feeling particularly welcome, while the rest decides the hub is not the place for them. I’d like to prevent this by enriching my toolbox with workshops on career planning, applied rationality, and research support already before I fully operate under The Berlin Hub’s brand and roof. (By the way: I’m very open for suggestions on which tools to learn and teach. If you have any ideas or even want to collaborate, shoot me a message.)
Before picking up this project, I optimized my facilitation toolbox for a target audience that is far above average in liking routines and structures. I personally *love* regular rituals like “Alright, let’s all sit down in a circle and answer these prompts together: 1) What went well during my last week? 2) What went badly? 3) What have I learned? 4) Which adjustments do I want to make for next week?” For others, having this as a regular feature of the house would be merely bearable or even pure kryptonite. I want to make sure to create a community that feels welcoming not only to me and copies of myself, but also to people who are quite dissimilar. This requires me to learn a more minimal and flexible approach to facilitating group processes. So to speak, I’ve mastered the Krav Maga of facilitation over the last years, but for leading a healthy community, I’ll have to pick up the Aikido of facilitation as well. This, too, will require some deliberate practice.
So, what’s next?
Laura is still doing ops remotely, but she is focusing full time on becoming a professional retreat organizer in the Bay Area this summer. I will facilitate as many workshops and retreats as possible over the next months for the Berlin area EA and rationalist communities (and sometimes in other locations) in order to fill the mentioned skill gaps. Feel free to reach out if you have ideas for workshops you’d want to see more often. Reach out as well if you’d like to collaborate on this, particularly if you are keen to help with operations.
As always, questions and comments are very welcome.
Hi,
the direct Discord invite link is no longer valid for me.
Could you please update it to the same one that is in the Google Form?
Thanks :-)
Done! Thanks a lot for pointing it out.