I want to clarify that this isn’t how our admissions process works, and neither you nor anyone else we accept would be bumping anyone out of a spot. We simply have a specific bar for admissions and everyone above that bar gets admitted.
This doesn’t seem right to me? For example:
In setting the bar I expect you consider, among other things, the desired conference size. For example, if you got a lot of “this conference felt too big” feedback, you’d probably respond by raising the bar for the next one.
If someone applies late, I would expect whether you’re able to make room for the would depend on whether you have capacity.
In setting the bar, desired conference size is not really a factor in our decision making, though perhaps it should be (and it possibly will be if the events get much larger) — we mostly just think about what type of applicants would be a good fit for the event. We seem to receive more feedback about the types of attendees that come (or don’t come) rather than feedback about the raw size of the conference, and so we mostly action on the former. If we started receiving lots of “this conference felt too big” feedback, then yes we would possibly action on that, but that hasn’t really happened yet and I don’t expect it to in the near future.
For EAG SF 2022, it looked like we might hit capacity limits for the venue, but we actually never needed to turn people away because of capacity. For the next few EAGs we’ve selected venues that can expand to be much larger than our expected needs (e.g., for our next bay area conference, a venue that could fit at least 2500 people if we really needed), so I’m not expecting us to need to think about capacity limits in this way in the near future.
To clarify, I’m referring to the EA Global conferences only. EAGx admissions and processes are handled differently between events, and different organizers may have different requirements or setups (such as perhaps actually needing to reject people for capacity reasons).
If we started receiving lots of “this conference felt too big” feedback, then yes we would possibly action on that, but that hasn’t really happened yet
The largest EA Global was about 1000 people in 2016, and we got feedback that it was too big and that it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. Our recent events have been between 500 − 650 people including speakers, volunteers, and staff.
Venues above that size tend to be significantly more expensive, or less suited to the event. We already subsidize tickets and provide financial aid to keep prices reasonable, so more attendees cost CEA more. (We know there are a variety of opinions about the tradeoffs between cost and the quality of the venue/logistics/catering, and we’ll continue to look at those tradeoffs carefully.)
We’ll continue exploring the question of how big the event should be, including ways to help people connect better even within a large event.
I’m not too familiar with EA Global 2016 but I’ll note that we did ask attendees whether they felt the conference was too big at EA Global: SF 2022 and they generally thought the size of the event was fine.
Since 2016, we introduced Swapcard (our networking app), which changes the dynamic somewhat and allows people to more easily find relevant people to meet (and hence make people feel less lost in the shuffle). We’ve also introduced more production staff and overall support since 2016, meaning we’ve gotten larger venues with spaces that are more suitable for bigger audiences.
I was definitely apprehensive going to a larger EAG more recently, so was pleasantly surprised at how Swapcard enabled the conference to be scaled up while maintaining the high rate of useful connections of a smaller more curated conference.
This year I was waitlisted for EAG London, and then promptly rejected. I didn’t assign it much importance as the time because I assumed it was caused by capacity limits and I had applied relatively late.
How does having a waitlist make sense if every applicant is considered by a uniform bar independent of capacity?
The rejection email did say I could update my application, but I didn’t understand it at the time and only noticed it after reading this thread. I think maybe the communication around this could be improved, although I’m only one data point. The main point is that it only appears after a bunch of other text and can be easily ignored when you already know that the main message is “you got rejected”.
Hi Guy — thanks for the feedback. I’m not entirely sure what happened re your London application, as I wasn’t on the team then. However we didn’t really use the waitlist for SF and I don’t expect us to use it for the foreseeable future. We’ve since updated a lot of our email templates, so I’m hoping the issue you mentioned is at least partially resolved.
If nothing else presumably at some point venues have fire code capacity limits, though maybe past conferences have been small enough these haven’t been binding.
This doesn’t seem right to me? For example:
In setting the bar I expect you consider, among other things, the desired conference size. For example, if you got a lot of “this conference felt too big” feedback, you’d probably respond by raising the bar for the next one.
If someone applies late, I would expect whether you’re able to make room for the would depend on whether you have capacity.
In setting the bar, desired conference size is not really a factor in our decision making, though perhaps it should be (and it possibly will be if the events get much larger) — we mostly just think about what type of applicants would be a good fit for the event. We seem to receive more feedback about the types of attendees that come (or don’t come) rather than feedback about the raw size of the conference, and so we mostly action on the former. If we started receiving lots of “this conference felt too big” feedback, then yes we would possibly action on that, but that hasn’t really happened yet and I don’t expect it to in the near future.
For EAG SF 2022, it looked like we might hit capacity limits for the venue, but we actually never needed to turn people away because of capacity. For the next few EAGs we’ve selected venues that can expand to be much larger than our expected needs (e.g., for our next bay area conference, a venue that could fit at least 2500 people if we really needed), so I’m not expecting us to need to think about capacity limits in this way in the near future.
To clarify, I’m referring to the EA Global conferences only. EAGx admissions and processes are handled differently between events, and different organizers may have different requirements or setups (such as perhaps actually needing to reject people for capacity reasons).
This directly contradicts this December 2019 EA Forum post about EAG admissions, which has the following as a reply to “Why not make [EAG] larger?” (emphasis mine):
I’m not too familiar with EA Global 2016 but I’ll note that we did ask attendees whether they felt the conference was too big at EA Global: SF 2022 and they generally thought the size of the event was fine.
Since 2016, we introduced Swapcard (our networking app), which changes the dynamic somewhat and allows people to more easily find relevant people to meet (and hence make people feel less lost in the shuffle). We’ve also introduced more production staff and overall support since 2016, meaning we’ve gotten larger venues with spaces that are more suitable for bigger audiences.
I was definitely apprehensive going to a larger EAG more recently, so was pleasantly surprised at how Swapcard enabled the conference to be scaled up while maintaining the high rate of useful connections of a smaller more curated conference.
Hi Eli, Thanks for your detailed replies here!
This year I was waitlisted for EAG London, and then promptly rejected. I didn’t assign it much importance as the time because I assumed it was caused by capacity limits and I had applied relatively late.
How does having a waitlist make sense if every applicant is considered by a uniform bar independent of capacity?
The rejection email did say I could update my application, but I didn’t understand it at the time and only noticed it after reading this thread. I think maybe the communication around this could be improved, although I’m only one data point. The main point is that it only appears after a bunch of other text and can be easily ignored when you already know that the main message is “you got rejected”.
Hi Guy — thanks for the feedback. I’m not entirely sure what happened re your London application, as I wasn’t on the team then. However we didn’t really use the waitlist for SF and I don’t expect us to use it for the foreseeable future. We’ve since updated a lot of our email templates, so I’m hoping the issue you mentioned is at least partially resolved.
Thanks, glad to hear that.
If nothing else presumably at some point venues have fire code capacity limits, though maybe past conferences have been small enough these haven’t been binding.