I always appreciate well-meaning discussion and thought this brought up some good points. That said, I overall don’t really agree with it.
It’s a lot of work to organize an event for many people. In the last year, total global attendance at EAGs (between all of them) seems to have grown by around an order of magnitude or so; from maybe ~500 ~3 years ago, to maybe ~6k this year? My impression is that it’s been correspondingly tricky to scale the CEA team in charge of this growth. I imagine specific proposals to “Open EAGs” would look like some combination of charging a fair bit more for them and/or allowing 10k+ people at each event. This doesn’t at all seem trivial. Maybe it would be easy to do a very minimalist/mediocre version of a huge event, but I imagine if that were done, people would find a lot of reasons to complain.
My personal proposal is that eventually, it would be nice (assuming there are people available to do it) to try out essentially an “EA Open”, with 5k-15k people. If this works, then rename “EA Open” to “EA Global”, and then continue having a smaller “EA Global event”, but now named something more like, “Super boring detailed EA summit.” This way the senior people could still have their event, and others can have some “EA” event to go to (that’s called “EA Global”, if they care about that so much).
Even if a bigger conference isn’t set up, I think “EA Global” might be a mediocre name for the current conference. The harm caused by the resentment of people not getting invited to it might outweigh the benefits of making it seem more accessible to some who do get in, but wouldn’t have applied otherwise. The branding could likewise change to make the focus seem more professional/dedicated.
Some people treat “EAG” as “A professional venue to do work meetings”, and others treat it as “the place for the cool kids to be cool with each other”. I’d probably prioritize the former for a few reasons.
Most of the benefits of attending EAG get watered down when you increase the size. I imagine the 10k-person version would look very different. The senior people that do show up wouldn’t have much time per person, and would be there for different reasons (recruitment, some very selective mentorship). The experience for most people would be “a chance to talk with many others who are vaguely interested in EA”. This doesn’t sound very exciting to me, but maybe it could be made to work somehow.
A few quick thoughts:
I always appreciate well-meaning discussion and thought this brought up some good points. That said, I overall don’t really agree with it.
It’s a lot of work to organize an event for many people. In the last year, total global attendance at EAGs (between all of them) seems to have grown by around an order of magnitude or so; from maybe ~500 ~3 years ago, to maybe ~6k this year? My impression is that it’s been correspondingly tricky to scale the CEA team in charge of this growth. I imagine specific proposals to “Open EAGs” would look like some combination of charging a fair bit more for them and/or allowing 10k+ people at each event. This doesn’t at all seem trivial. Maybe it would be easy to do a very minimalist/mediocre version of a huge event, but I imagine if that were done, people would find a lot of reasons to complain.
My personal proposal is that eventually, it would be nice (assuming there are people available to do it) to try out essentially an “EA Open”, with 5k-15k people. If this works, then rename “EA Open” to “EA Global”, and then continue having a smaller “EA Global event”, but now named something more like, “Super boring detailed EA summit.” This way the senior people could still have their event, and others can have some “EA” event to go to (that’s called “EA Global”, if they care about that so much).
Even if a bigger conference isn’t set up, I think “EA Global” might be a mediocre name for the current conference. The harm caused by the resentment of people not getting invited to it might outweigh the benefits of making it seem more accessible to some who do get in, but wouldn’t have applied otherwise. The branding could likewise change to make the focus seem more professional/dedicated.
Some people treat “EAG” as “A professional venue to do work meetings”, and others treat it as “the place for the cool kids to be cool with each other”. I’d probably prioritize the former for a few reasons.
Most of the benefits of attending EAG get watered down when you increase the size. I imagine the 10k-person version would look very different. The senior people that do show up wouldn’t have much time per person, and would be there for different reasons (recruitment, some very selective mentorship). The experience for most people would be “a chance to talk with many others who are vaguely interested in EA”. This doesn’t sound very exciting to me, but maybe it could be made to work somehow.