Period of office hours that isn’t in competition with any (or few) talks near the end of the conference.
While I know that this year’s EAG had office hours with different organizations scattered throughout the weekend, I thought that this aspect of the conference was actually handled better in 2015.
Office hours seem to be done better when they have their own time allotted to them that isn’t in competition with any other talk. People new to EA seem to routinely not take advantage of the benefits of meeting the leaders of EA Orgs at EAG, both because they underestimate the value of doing so and because they think it isn’t their place to engage. In 2015, part of the schedule had nothing scheduled besides meeting with leaders of various EA organizations, complete with a sign-up sheet so you could be sure that there would room for you to air your specific questions and that the leader you wanted to meet with would be focused on their conversation with you. It removed any concern about wasting the time of some important EA, they were yours for those 15⁄20 minutes.
I think this is hard to scale as EAG gets larger, but there are also more leaders of EA Orgs now than there were in 2015. I think a portion of the conference, near the end, with a list of prominent-ish EAs and descriptions of what they do where you can sign up for office hours would be a welcome re-addition. Interested in discussing the disadvantages and downsides of doing this (EAGxs will have a harder time implementing this).
Period of office hours that isn’t in competition with any (or few) talks near the end of the conference.
While I know that this year’s EAG had office hours with different organizations scattered throughout the weekend, I thought that this aspect of the conference was actually handled better in 2015.
Office hours seem to be done better when they have their own time allotted to them that isn’t in competition with any other talk. People new to EA seem to routinely not take advantage of the benefits of meeting the leaders of EA Orgs at EAG, both because they underestimate the value of doing so and because they think it isn’t their place to engage. In 2015, part of the schedule had nothing scheduled besides meeting with leaders of various EA organizations, complete with a sign-up sheet so you could be sure that there would room for you to air your specific questions and that the leader you wanted to meet with would be focused on their conversation with you. It removed any concern about wasting the time of some important EA, they were yours for those 15⁄20 minutes.
I think this is hard to scale as EAG gets larger, but there are also more leaders of EA Orgs now than there were in 2015. I think a portion of the conference, near the end, with a list of prominent-ish EAs and descriptions of what they do where you can sign up for office hours would be a welcome re-addition. Interested in discussing the disadvantages and downsides of doing this (EAGxs will have a harder time implementing this).