Hi Scott, I truly appreciated your post on “Open EA Global” and am inclined to agree on most fronts. This is a month old, EAG DC has passed, and so I’ll strive to focus on what’s new or unique versus what has already been said:
I’m new to the EA community and have not been to EAG. In fact, I applied to EAGx Berlin this month and was told to apply to a local conference, then I applied to EAG DC and was told to apply to an EAGx. (No EAGx will be posted in my region until likely Boston in the spring; although I can look forward to the virtual conference coming up.) I was excited to dive in to the community and disappointed by the chicken-and-egg here and the impersonal rejection process. I still believe EA is a great cause, I understand the thankless job of the staff in these decisions, and I acknowledge the ways I can strengthen my personal candidacy. (But I wish the website had not invited me to apply with such cheer! And I wish I had spent less time on this particular process.)
Despite not being an EA, I possess professional experience around community engagement and customer service. I led massive Growth in two companies from obscurity through IPO. My teams have popularized challenging concepts to mainstream audiences and dealt with toxic customer service issues. I acknowledge I am one year into my EA journey and far from the smartest person in the room.
Being an EA is an identity, it’s a personal choice. That sums up why EAG rejections may sting so badly compared to, say, getting passed over for a job offer or finding out Burning Man tix already sold out. The literature can state that this is merely admission to event and it’s not intended to be a personal judgment, but the verdict might not feel that way to an individual. Even in these comments, I see lots of talk of “not meeting the bar” which personally makes me uncomfortable when the bar is so ill-defined. A “good enough EA” seems like a straightforward interpretation of this bar, so I get why some folks take it personally.
The overall objective of EA is to find the best ways to help people and put them into practice. Let’s set aside costs, logistics, precedent and hurt feelings… for EA to find the most effective interventions and scale them, it benefits from casting a large net. This exposes the growing movement to new ideas which can be sifted through (and incorporated or discarded). So it seems to me, the larger, more open conference serves the overarching objective best. There are plenty of technologies that can and do help with matching in order to make the event “feel” smaller for various reasons. There are still plenty of ways to pamper the 800 pound gorillas.
To an outsider, it’s not apparent how networking-heavy EAG is. It’s only because I have multiple colleagues who have attended EAG in the past that I learned how the 1-1 matching is a key factor in doling out spaces. I approached the event with the mentality of “let’s consume content, hear keynotes and absorb all that EA has to offer!” It’s clear from some of the comments that this is relatively unimportant, but I do wonder if EAG misses a golden opportunity to amplify the content for general community-building (and as one comment mentions—to elevate voices besides Will’s).
Is South by Southwest (Tech) a worthwhile template for EAG? The massive conference in Austin, TX has a growing share of detractors, but it did a lot of things right. The “Day Pass” is the front door for folks who are attending, learning, listening (and paying big bucks) to attend. Then there are all manner of networking events from semi-public lectures to exclusive gatherings on top of the Ritz. I don’t feel bad that I didn’t get a 1-1 with the CEO of X company, because I didn’t even know that was going on. That conference has succeeded in letting anyone in and creating exclusivity at the same time.
Thanks again for the consideration and I hope you find this helpful, etc. -Steve
Hi Scott, I truly appreciated your post on “Open EA Global” and am inclined to agree on most fronts. This is a month old, EAG DC has passed, and so I’ll strive to focus on what’s new or unique versus what has already been said:
I’m new to the EA community and have not been to EAG. In fact, I applied to EAGx Berlin this month and was told to apply to a local conference, then I applied to EAG DC and was told to apply to an EAGx. (No EAGx will be posted in my region until likely Boston in the spring; although I can look forward to the virtual conference coming up.) I was excited to dive in to the community and disappointed by the chicken-and-egg here and the impersonal rejection process. I still believe EA is a great cause, I understand the thankless job of the staff in these decisions, and I acknowledge the ways I can strengthen my personal candidacy. (But I wish the website had not invited me to apply with such cheer! And I wish I had spent less time on this particular process.)
Despite not being an EA, I possess professional experience around community engagement and customer service. I led massive Growth in two companies from obscurity through IPO. My teams have popularized challenging concepts to mainstream audiences and dealt with toxic customer service issues. I acknowledge I am one year into my EA journey and far from the smartest person in the room.
Being an EA is an identity, it’s a personal choice. That sums up why EAG rejections may sting so badly compared to, say, getting passed over for a job offer or finding out Burning Man tix already sold out. The literature can state that this is merely admission to event and it’s not intended to be a personal judgment, but the verdict might not feel that way to an individual. Even in these comments, I see lots of talk of “not meeting the bar” which personally makes me uncomfortable when the bar is so ill-defined. A “good enough EA” seems like a straightforward interpretation of this bar, so I get why some folks take it personally.
The overall objective of EA is to find the best ways to help people and put them into practice. Let’s set aside costs, logistics, precedent and hurt feelings… for EA to find the most effective interventions and scale them, it benefits from casting a large net. This exposes the growing movement to new ideas which can be sifted through (and incorporated or discarded). So it seems to me, the larger, more open conference serves the overarching objective best. There are plenty of technologies that can and do help with matching in order to make the event “feel” smaller for various reasons. There are still plenty of ways to pamper the 800 pound gorillas.
To an outsider, it’s not apparent how networking-heavy EAG is. It’s only because I have multiple colleagues who have attended EAG in the past that I learned how the 1-1 matching is a key factor in doling out spaces. I approached the event with the mentality of “let’s consume content, hear keynotes and absorb all that EA has to offer!” It’s clear from some of the comments that this is relatively unimportant, but I do wonder if EAG misses a golden opportunity to amplify the content for general community-building (and as one comment mentions—to elevate voices besides Will’s).
Is South by Southwest (Tech) a worthwhile template for EAG? The massive conference in Austin, TX has a growing share of detractors, but it did a lot of things right. The “Day Pass” is the front door for folks who are attending, learning, listening (and paying big bucks) to attend. Then there are all manner of networking events from semi-public lectures to exclusive gatherings on top of the Ritz. I don’t feel bad that I didn’t get a 1-1 with the CEO of X company, because I didn’t even know that was going on. That conference has succeeded in letting anyone in and creating exclusivity at the same time.
Thanks again for the consideration and I hope you find this helpful, etc. -Steve