I think that community building has historically been massively promoted as important by EA communicators and key institutions, but then implicitly undervalued by the actual prestige, funding and support offered to existing or aspiring community builders.
This is my impression too. For university groups, CEA was trying to fix this with the Campus Specialist program, which was then discontinued. I’m curious why an org isn’t hiring people on 2-year contracts / longer-term roles to lead promising city and national groups, since only being able to do the job on a grant already seems lower-prestige. (Someone might think: if people cared about community building enough, they would hire me to do it in a more stable way.)
The alternative is to ping people or get on a zoom call. But this is demanding of others time, especially since sometimes these contacts are not seen as entirely asynchronous.
You would might need to ping multiple people, or otherwise babysit this issue by successively contacting people, and that isn’t worth it for many people.
When programs are cancelled like this, it’s often for complicated reasons. While getting a personal account is useful (but costly), it’s harder to share this with others. It seems better to create norms to encourage this announcement on the EA Forum.
There is a good chance the parent comment is wrong/noise and this public comment should fix that.
I am also curious why there aren’t set up orgs in central locations that can employ people. And I am hoping to get some input on from CEA / similar actors.
To be fair though, many city/national groups (e.g. EA Sweden that I run) are set up as non-profits and CEA are happy to fund those organizations, that in turn employs group organizers.
This is an intersting idea! I can see som practical / legal issues with having a organization with a few hired people in many different countries. But it should defintely work for the US and UK, where many community builders are based. Also it should work with “regional hubs” in other locations. And even though one might not be able to be technically hired, having a joint back office for many things just seems robustly good. Maybe EA Nordics can lead the way with some experiments here!
As a really quick thought, I was just chatting with an aspiring community builder and we thought that (executive) director of community (strategy) or something similar sounding could be worth considering. It might be worth looking at the tech community or similar to see their norms.
Or test titles on an appropriate audience. For example, come up with 20 different titles, then pay 100 professional recruiters 20 dollars each to vote on which one sounds most impressive. Actually, maybe something like that could be done on an even larger scale to find out how this “career capital issue” can be improved for many EA job roles.
This is my impression too. For university groups, CEA was trying to fix this with the Campus Specialist program, which was then discontinued. I’m curious why an org isn’t hiring people on 2-year contracts / longer-term roles to lead promising city and national groups, since only being able to do the job on a grant already seems lower-prestige. (Someone might think: if people cared about community building enough, they would hire me to do it in a more stable way.)
The Campus Specialist program was discontinued? The one announced ~4 months ago?
This seemed like an important thing.
(It seems like there are other ways to ask about this. I am biased to making a public comment, because it seems like good practice [1]).
The alternative is to ping people or get on a zoom call. But this is demanding of others time, especially since sometimes these contacts are not seen as entirely asynchronous.
You would might need to ping multiple people, or otherwise babysit this issue by successively contacting people, and that isn’t worth it for many people.
When programs are cancelled like this, it’s often for complicated reasons. While getting a personal account is useful (but costly), it’s harder to share this with others. It seems better to create norms to encourage this announcement on the EA Forum.
There is a good chance the parent comment is wrong/noise and this public comment should fix that.
Yes, it was discontinued shortly after being launched. I am not sure why, but would be very curious to learn why.
I am also curious why there aren’t set up orgs in central locations that can employ people. And I am hoping to get some input on from CEA / similar actors.
To be fair though, many city/national groups (e.g. EA Sweden that I run) are set up as non-profits and CEA are happy to fund those organizations, that in turn employs group organizers.
This is an intersting idea! I can see som practical / legal issues with having a organization with a few hired people in many different countries. But it should defintely work for the US and UK, where many community builders are based. Also it should work with “regional hubs” in other locations. And even though one might not be able to be technically hired, having a joint back office for many things just seems robustly good. Maybe EA Nordics can lead the way with some experiments here!
As a really quick thought, I was just chatting with an aspiring community builder and we thought that (executive) director of community (strategy) or something similar sounding could be worth considering. It might be worth looking at the tech community or similar to see their norms.
Or test titles on an appropriate audience. For example, come up with 20 different titles, then pay 100 professional recruiters 20 dollars each to vote on which one sounds most impressive. Actually, maybe something like that could be done on an even larger scale to find out how this “career capital issue” can be improved for many EA job roles.
I like this!