I didn’t read the full post, but the gist of it aligns with what I did as an organizer (started Yale EA):
I ran another organization (and joined many others) before founding YEA, which gave me some experience with logistics/keeping a group on task. I also talked to a few other new organizers to share ideas and observations (though we were all newbies at that point).
The most important aspect of the group was that we had fun and became friends. The times I remember aren’t the quixotic “EA” activities (which were pretty shambolic, since there were no intro courses back then), but the lunch conversations and movie nights and hard personal things we dealt with together. College is a very crowded time, but people returned to meetings and went to parties because they liked the nerdy, good-natured group we had formed.
I never even met the person who became the leader for several years after I left — turns out (IIRC) that they attended one party we held and liked the atmosphere so much that they decided to join the year after. If we hadn’t been hosting parties with very light theming, the group may not have lasted through the 2010s.
Ah that’s awesome Aaron! I do feel like these social approaches can lead to really cool unexpected outcomes, which I think is harder to achieve with things like fellowships and a more “teachy” approach.
I also think this adds to my feeling that the best community builders are… the best at community building, not just the most knowledgeable—good generalist abilities and intuition, prior experience, and strong social skills (approachability, likability, openness, etc.) all feel more important in my mind than a mental index of the forum/ being really brought into the ideas (these things can be helpful, but don’t feel nearly as important)
I didn’t read the full post, but the gist of it aligns with what I did as an organizer (started Yale EA):
I ran another organization (and joined many others) before founding YEA, which gave me some experience with logistics/keeping a group on task. I also talked to a few other new organizers to share ideas and observations (though we were all newbies at that point).
The most important aspect of the group was that we had fun and became friends. The times I remember aren’t the quixotic “EA” activities (which were pretty shambolic, since there were no intro courses back then), but the lunch conversations and movie nights and hard personal things we dealt with together. College is a very crowded time, but people returned to meetings and went to parties because they liked the nerdy, good-natured group we had formed.
I never even met the person who became the leader for several years after I left — turns out (IIRC) that they attended one party we held and liked the atmosphere so much that they decided to join the year after. If we hadn’t been hosting parties with very light theming, the group may not have lasted through the 2010s.
Ah that’s awesome Aaron! I do feel like these social approaches can lead to really cool unexpected outcomes, which I think is harder to achieve with things like fellowships and a more “teachy” approach.
I also think this adds to my feeling that the best community builders are… the best at community building, not just the most knowledgeable—good generalist abilities and intuition, prior experience, and strong social skills (approachability, likability, openness, etc.) all feel more important in my mind than a mental index of the forum/ being really brought into the ideas (these things can be helpful, but don’t feel nearly as important)