Thanks for doing all this analysis, very interesting. Did you ask if people had ever attended an EAGx or EAG before? (I was in the control group but can’t remember whether I was asked this or not). For me personally, I’m pretty confident my first EAGx made the most counterfactual difference in continued engagement, vs subsequent EAGxes.
We considered it and I definitely agree that people who are attending their first EAGx are much more likely to be affected. The issue is that people in that bucket are already likely to be dramatically increasing their level of engagement, so it’s hard to draw conclusions from the results on that front
I would agree with Rebecca here. In my case, attending my first EAGx dramatically changed the course of my career (I’m now doing community building professionally), and if I hadn’t attended, I think there’s a fairly high chance that I’d now be in a totally different non-EA related career, and most likely a less impactful one (but that bit’s harder to measure, of course). In comparison, I attended EAG London this year, which was my second in-person conference. And while it was a really great experience all round—I learned a lot, made a lot of useful connections & strengthened old ones, and also gave (hopefully useful) advice to others—it was definitely less impactful than my first EAGx in terms of how much it directly affected my career path.
Thanks for doing all this analysis, very interesting. Did you ask if people had ever attended an EAGx or EAG before? (I was in the control group but can’t remember whether I was asked this or not). For me personally, I’m pretty confident my first EAGx made the most counterfactual difference in continued engagement, vs subsequent EAGxes.
We considered it and I definitely agree that people who are attending their first EAGx are much more likely to be affected. The issue is that people in that bucket are already likely to be dramatically increasing their level of engagement, so it’s hard to draw conclusions from the results on that front
I’m not sure that’s true, though I may be biased by my own case
I would agree with Rebecca here. In my case, attending my first EAGx dramatically changed the course of my career (I’m now doing community building professionally), and if I hadn’t attended, I think there’s a fairly high chance that I’d now be in a totally different non-EA related career, and most likely a less impactful one (but that bit’s harder to measure, of course). In comparison, I attended EAG London this year, which was my second in-person conference. And while it was a really great experience all round—I learned a lot, made a lot of useful connections & strengthened old ones, and also gave (hopefully useful) advice to others—it was definitely less impactful than my first EAGx in terms of how much it directly affected my career path.