Two points of feedback on how EA Global is currently presented a little bit more like an event for the EA community:
“The conference is called “EA Global” and is universally billed as the place where EAs meet one another, learn more about the movement, and have a good time together.” It’s possible we should rename the event, and I agree this confusion and reputation is problematic, but I would like to clarify that we don’t define the event like this anywhere
EA Global is the conference series for the effective altruism community.
Our events are designed for community members who already have a solid understanding of effective altruism but would like to make new connections, discuss ideas, develop their skills, or move into new roles.
I think from this description I personally interpret more Scott’s caricature than EAG being intended as a high bar networking event:
“for the effective altruism community” → makes it sound like it’s a community event, which I’d expect to be inclusive
“community members who already have a solid understanding” → does not sound particularly exclusive to me
“make connections, discuss ideas, develop skills” → sounds somewhat vague and general for me, and “make connections” sounds to me like “connect to your fellow EAs”
Secondly, the first picture series on the website also makes it look to me more like a community event and less like a professional networking event. Half of them are photos of large groups and speakers. Only one of the pictures seems to be a 1-to-1 conversation.
Thanks for the thoughts here — a lot of what’s going on is just that our website is pretty out of date, and we’re in the process of refreshing/updating it currently. We’re also going to make some slight edits to our front page ~now to make things a bit clearer.
As Eli said, we are planning to revamp our website.
In the meantime, I’ve edited the homepage to be more accurate / to match the information on our FAQ page and admissions page to say:
”EA Global is designed for people who have a solid understanding of the main concepts of effective altruism, and who are making decisions and taking significant actions based on them.
EA Global conferences are not the only events for people interested in effective altruism! EAGx conferences are locally-organized conferences designed primarily for people:
Familiar with the core ideas of effective altruism
Interested in learning more about what to do
From the region or country where the conference is taking place (or living there)
I’ve edited the homepage to be more accurate / to match the information on our FAQ page and admissions page to say:
”EA Global is designed for people who have a solid understanding of the main concepts of effective altruism, and who are making decisions and taking significant actions based on them.
From my understanding, this new description seems fairly misleading, given the following EA Forum comments:
I can second the vibe of Zach’s ‘Data point’ comment. I know/met a few (<5 but I suspect more were there based on my sampling) students at EAG SF who had only recently engaged with EA ideas and had not (yet) taken any ‘significant action’ based on them.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to elaborate!
Two points of feedback on how EA Global is currently presented a little bit more like an event for the EA community:
This is the headline description from https://www.eaglobal.org :
I think from this description I personally interpret more Scott’s caricature than EAG being intended as a high bar networking event:
“for the effective altruism community” → makes it sound like it’s a community event, which I’d expect to be inclusive
“community members who already have a solid understanding” → does not sound particularly exclusive to me
“make connections, discuss ideas, develop skills” → sounds somewhat vague and general for me, and “make connections” sounds to me like “connect to your fellow EAs”
Secondly, the first picture series on the website also makes it look to me more like a community event and less like a professional networking event. Half of them are photos of large groups and speakers. Only one of the pictures seems to be a 1-to-1 conversation.
Thanks for the thoughts here — a lot of what’s going on is just that our website is pretty out of date, and we’re in the process of refreshing/updating it currently. We’re also going to make some slight edits to our front page ~now to make things a bit clearer.
Thanks, Max! I agree that’s confusing.
As Eli said, we are planning to revamp our website.
In the meantime, I’ve edited the homepage to be more accurate / to match the information on our FAQ page and admissions page to say:
”EA Global is designed for people who have a solid understanding of the main concepts of effective altruism, and who are making decisions and taking significant actions based on them.
EA Global conferences are not the only events for people interested in effective altruism! EAGx conferences are locally-organized conferences designed primarily for people:
Familiar with the core ideas of effective altruism
Interested in learning more about what to do
From the region or country where the conference is taking place (or living there)
See our FAQ page for more information.”
The edits should show up shortly if they haven’t already.
From my understanding, this new description seems fairly misleading, given the following EA Forum comments:
From Zach Stein-Perlman:
From Kevin Kuruc:
From Lauren Maria:
Cool, thanks for the extremely quick responses! :)