Really cool initiative. I recently finished an EA Intro Virtual Group, and I definitely resonate with the benefits of being part of such a group that you describe. I also like the structure and points about the spirit of reading groups you provided.
One point that might be challenging with organizing something like this is delegating meta responsibility to a stranger. I’ve tried something similar in the past and very few people volunteered, and of those, not many were able to keep up with their meta tasks.
It might be easier to start small with one group, and slowly recruit discussion organizers from previous participants over time. Does anyone else have tactical tips for how to make something like this happen with as few bumps as possible?
Yeah, I considered moving more slowly in the way that you suggest. The reasons I’m not doing that feel a bit complicated/hard to articulate, but some of my motivations:
Not wanting to be patronising towards people. Making a cal event is not hard, anyone can do it
Feeling like ‘value this thing enough that someone in the group can make a cal event for it’ is a reasonable bar below which it maybe just makes sense for a group to fail
Having more trust/faith in groups than I think some other people have. Like, I don’t expect that by default everything will work super smoothly. But I don’t think it needs to work smoothly to be valuable, and I do expect by default that smart people will be able to notice that no one’s shared a reading yet or that there’s a scheduling conflict to resolve, even without someone being meta point person
Desire to experiment, to offer a space which I have found really valuable to others, not to drag things out for months and months on something which is actually pretty simple
Really cool initiative. I recently finished an EA Intro Virtual Group, and I definitely resonate with the benefits of being part of such a group that you describe. I also like the structure and points about the spirit of reading groups you provided.
One point that might be challenging with organizing something like this is delegating meta responsibility to a stranger. I’ve tried something similar in the past and very few people volunteered, and of those, not many were able to keep up with their meta tasks.
It might be easier to start small with one group, and slowly recruit discussion organizers from previous participants over time. Does anyone else have tactical tips for how to make something like this happen with as few bumps as possible?
Yeah, I considered moving more slowly in the way that you suggest. The reasons I’m not doing that feel a bit complicated/hard to articulate, but some of my motivations:
Not wanting to be patronising towards people. Making a cal event is not hard, anyone can do it
Feeling like ‘value this thing enough that someone in the group can make a cal event for it’ is a reasonable bar below which it maybe just makes sense for a group to fail
Having more trust/faith in groups than I think some other people have. Like, I don’t expect that by default everything will work super smoothly. But I don’t think it needs to work smoothly to be valuable, and I do expect by default that smart people will be able to notice that no one’s shared a reading yet or that there’s a scheduling conflict to resolve, even without someone being meta point person
Desire to experiment, to offer a space which I have found really valuable to others, not to drag things out for months and months on something which is actually pretty simple