I weakly suggest that Twitter is also underrated by EAs interested in policy. I’m happy to write something fully if people upvote this.
The sketch of my argument is that lots of top staffers are on Twitter and it’s not hard to get access to them. Many EAs are followed by big academics, pubic figures etc, I’ve had several chats to movers and shakers (Noah Smith, David Shor, Tyler Cowen). I imagine someone who sought to talk to staffers in a particular area could after about 6 months of posting for 3 hours a week.
I agree Twitter is probably underrated in the EA community. However, I would disagree with (or at least strongly caveat) this statement: “I imagine someone who sought to talk to staffers in a particular area could after about 6 months of posting for 3 hours a week.”
One meeting with a staffer is not difficult to get if you’ve been in DC for a while. The question is what you do in that meeting and what you want to get out of it. Twitter is a tool that you can use to promote ideas/research/etc., so you need those pieces before Twitter is useful. Staffers won’t find it very helpful if you meet with them and you can’t go deeper than Twitter-level conversation. Typically, real impact from staffer engagement comes only after the third or fourth meeting, and those follow-ups require trust and deep analysis.
So I think Twitter is useful, but I don’t think it’s a substitute for more “traditional” think tank work, and I would discourage people who don’t have much of a policy background from using Twitter in order to get a meeting with a staffer — I’m not sure if you were suggesting that, but it’s possible to interpret your statement that way, so I just want to flag that before people start rushing to Twitter en masse. :)
I weakly suggest that Twitter is also underrated by EAs interested in policy. I’m happy to write something fully if people upvote this.
The sketch of my argument is that lots of top staffers are on Twitter and it’s not hard to get access to them. Many EAs are followed by big academics, pubic figures etc, I’ve had several chats to movers and shakers (Noah Smith, David Shor, Tyler Cowen). I imagine someone who sought to talk to staffers in a particular area could after about 6 months of posting for 3 hours a week.
I agree Twitter is probably underrated in the EA community. However, I would disagree with (or at least strongly caveat) this statement: “I imagine someone who sought to talk to staffers in a particular area could after about 6 months of posting for 3 hours a week.”
One meeting with a staffer is not difficult to get if you’ve been in DC for a while. The question is what you do in that meeting and what you want to get out of it. Twitter is a tool that you can use to promote ideas/research/etc., so you need those pieces before Twitter is useful. Staffers won’t find it very helpful if you meet with them and you can’t go deeper than Twitter-level conversation. Typically, real impact from staffer engagement comes only after the third or fourth meeting, and those follow-ups require trust and deep analysis.
So I think Twitter is useful, but I don’t think it’s a substitute for more “traditional” think tank work, and I would discourage people who don’t have much of a policy background from using Twitter in order to get a meeting with a staffer — I’m not sure if you were suggesting that, but it’s possible to interpret your statement that way, so I just want to flag that before people start rushing to Twitter en masse. :)