This sounds super cool! Reading the full post, I got the (maybe unqualified) impression that a lot of thought went into making this robust and making it work well.
Not only has CEEALAR’s hotel successfully been running for almost four years by now. In addition, they were facing significant hurdles we don’t expect to impinge on our own project: [...]
Reading this makes me optimistic about both the future of CEEALAR’s hotel and also the Berlin hub. But I also wonder whether there’re factors / hurdles that CEEALAR hasn’t faced that you expect the Berlin hub might face.. What do you think?
Each question helps me explicate my partially implicit models a bit more. Thanks for this one, it was fun to think through!
I see three downsides to our current model compared to CEEALAR’s: 1. We plan to rent instead of buy, and that in Berlin’s instead of Blackpool’s housing market. Whether just initially or long-term depends on how great the house we manage to get turns out to be. This implies that what Greg paid to buy the hotel in Blackpool (around £100k-£200k, if I remember correctly) is what we would need for anywhere between 1 and 4 years runtime for the property alone. If we were to immediately buy an appropriately sized house in the Berlin area, the price would lay somewhere between €1m in the surrounding countryside and €12m within the Berliner Ring (i.e. in one of the more central, but less calm districts).
2. Minor point, but: The best buildings we found so far are apartment buildings in the outer districts of Berlin. They are far cheaper than we feared, and offer all the key features of suburban living: A calm, conducive-to-work neighborhood, closeness to nature, as well as sufficiently good public transport connections to central Berlin. In addition, we wouldn’t have to navigate legal complications around the local zoning regulations like we would if we tried to repurpose a hotel for longer-term residency. However, this also means that we don’t have a central industrial-grade kitchen for the whole house. Accordingly, the everyday life at The Berlin Hub might end up looking a bit more like a large impact-focused flatshare than the unique model of CEEALAR.
3. Humans being as they are, the closer collaboration we plan to instigate at the hub might lead to us cultivating an idea monoculture at The Berlin Hub that isn’t conducive to our cause. Something CEEALAR through the bigger diversity and faster flowthrough of residents doesn’t seem to be in danger of developing.
Thoughts/preventive strategies on these:
1. In CEEALAR’s current model, the default is to offer free stays to everyone working on EA-aligned projects so that they don’t have to waste time in day jobs. The largest target audience of this model are people in phases of career transition—just like I was when I stayed there this winter after finishing my master’s and during developing the concept for The Berlin Hub.
The residents we would expect the highest counterfactual impact from in our project, however, are slightly more senior and financially solvent: Either freshly transitioning out of well-paid tech jobs, or already advanced enough to be just above the entry barrier for receiving LTFF funding as independent researchers. Accordingly, we plan to take some rent by default. Whether at or below cost and whether we can afford offering stipends to people who we consider exceptionally competent depends on our funding situation.
One quirk of taking rent: I got some anecdotal evidence that mainstream EA funders are suspicious of CEEALAR’s “weird” model of having people stay for free, so it might actually be easier for us to get additional funding if we take rent by default.
2. Not being able to free the residents from all the inconveniences of everyday life would be inconvenient, but isn’t a catastrophe. After all, other co-living projects succeed in managing their own cooking as well.
3. Bringing fresh ideas into the house and preventing an idea monoculture from forming will be a key part of my job as a community manager. We will experiment with this once things are up and running. In the current plans, that is where a) the visiting scholars program, b) shorter-term guests, and c) occasional events like community dinners with the local EA community come into play.
Does that answer your question, does it raise more?
This sounds super cool! Reading the full post, I got the (maybe unqualified) impression that a lot of thought went into making this robust and making it work well.
Reading this makes me optimistic about both the future of CEEALAR’s hotel and also the Berlin hub. But I also wonder whether there’re factors / hurdles that CEEALAR hasn’t faced that you expect the Berlin hub might face.. What do you think?
Each question helps me explicate my partially implicit models a bit more. Thanks for this one, it was fun to think through!
I see three downsides to our current model compared to CEEALAR’s:
1. We plan to rent instead of buy, and that in Berlin’s instead of Blackpool’s housing market. Whether just initially or long-term depends on how great the house we manage to get turns out to be. This implies that what Greg paid to buy the hotel in Blackpool (around £100k-£200k, if I remember correctly) is what we would need for anywhere between 1 and 4 years runtime for the property alone. If we were to immediately buy an appropriately sized house in the Berlin area, the price would lay somewhere between €1m in the surrounding countryside and €12m within the Berliner Ring (i.e. in one of the more central, but less calm districts).
2. Minor point, but: The best buildings we found so far are apartment buildings in the outer districts of Berlin. They are far cheaper than we feared, and offer all the key features of suburban living: A calm, conducive-to-work neighborhood, closeness to nature, as well as sufficiently good public transport connections to central Berlin. In addition, we wouldn’t have to navigate legal complications around the local zoning regulations like we would if we tried to repurpose a hotel for longer-term residency. However, this also means that we don’t have a central industrial-grade kitchen for the whole house. Accordingly, the everyday life at The Berlin Hub might end up looking a bit more like a large impact-focused flatshare than the unique model of CEEALAR.
3. Humans being as they are, the closer collaboration we plan to instigate at the hub might lead to us cultivating an idea monoculture at The Berlin Hub that isn’t conducive to our cause. Something CEEALAR through the bigger diversity and faster flowthrough of residents doesn’t seem to be in danger of developing.
Thoughts/preventive strategies on these:
1. In CEEALAR’s current model, the default is to offer free stays to everyone working on EA-aligned projects so that they don’t have to waste time in day jobs. The largest target audience of this model are people in phases of career transition—just like I was when I stayed there this winter after finishing my master’s and during developing the concept for The Berlin Hub.
The residents we would expect the highest counterfactual impact from in our project, however, are slightly more senior and financially solvent: Either freshly transitioning out of well-paid tech jobs, or already advanced enough to be just above the entry barrier for receiving LTFF funding as independent researchers. Accordingly, we plan to take some rent by default. Whether at or below cost and whether we can afford offering stipends to people who we consider exceptionally competent depends on our funding situation.
One quirk of taking rent: I got some anecdotal evidence that mainstream EA funders are suspicious of CEEALAR’s “weird” model of having people stay for free, so it might actually be easier for us to get additional funding if we take rent by default.
2. Not being able to free the residents from all the inconveniences of everyday life would be inconvenient, but isn’t a catastrophe. After all, other co-living projects succeed in managing their own cooking as well.
3. Bringing fresh ideas into the house and preventing an idea monoculture from forming will be a key part of my job as a community manager. We will experiment with this once things are up and running. In the current plans, that is where a) the visiting scholars program, b) shorter-term guests, and c) occasional events like community dinners with the local EA community come into play.
Does that answer your question, does it raise more?
Oh wow, thank you for this elaborate response!
FWIW, I don’t think nr 2 is a big negative, if it’s a net negative at all.
Yes, it answers my question. And no, it didn’t raise more, at least for the moment.