I think trying to have this be the ea virtual group will be difficult. If all EAs were in one city, there just couldn’t be a single EA meetup in that city, it would be too large.
There is also a really tricky issue of who will attend. EAs aren’t one unit. There are a bunch of pockets that have various relationships and opinions of each other. I think trying to aim for “absolutely everyone” will prove challenging, if that is the goal. For instance, experienced researchers don’t typically enjoy spending a lot of time with very new people, as most of the questions are very basic.
I’d probably encourage you to think more about either specializing on some subtopic, or trying to identify a specific few key members that represent what you want the social group to grow towards.
I’ve found a lot of these social/reading groups are something like, “These 3 people really like talking to each other and are similar in a few key ways, and they can grow to others who share some of those similarities.”
I’ve done something similar (.impact, a while back), and also hosted a few EA groups in the past; these ideas come from those experiences.
The name is perhaps sup-optimal in communicating the purpose of the group, but it was better than the alternatives we considered.
I made this because there wasn’t a space for EAs who don’t t have access to local groups, not for all EAs. And if it gets too large, we could have subgroups.
The attendees will not be homogeneous, but I don’t think we will experience problems re differences in opinions and/or knowledge by a much greater degree than a local group might.
Thank you for taking the time to write this, any other considerations welcome.
Sure thing. I’m less concerned with the name than the collection of possibly-too-varied people it brings in, for the sake of the project. I imagine you’ll get a better sense though as you start it.
Kudos for taking on an initiative like this!
I think trying to have this be the ea virtual group will be difficult. If all EAs were in one city, there just couldn’t be a single EA meetup in that city, it would be too large.
There is also a really tricky issue of who will attend. EAs aren’t one unit. There are a bunch of pockets that have various relationships and opinions of each other. I think trying to aim for “absolutely everyone” will prove challenging, if that is the goal. For instance, experienced researchers don’t typically enjoy spending a lot of time with very new people, as most of the questions are very basic.
I’d probably encourage you to think more about either specializing on some subtopic, or trying to identify a specific few key members that represent what you want the social group to grow towards.
I’ve found a lot of these social/reading groups are something like, “These 3 people really like talking to each other and are similar in a few key ways, and they can grow to others who share some of those similarities.”
I’ve done something similar (.impact, a while back), and also hosted a few EA groups in the past; these ideas come from those experiences.
Good luck!
Hey Ozzie,
The name is perhaps sup-optimal in communicating the purpose of the group, but it was better than the alternatives we considered.
I made this because there wasn’t a space for EAs who don’t t have access to local groups, not for all EAs. And if it gets too large, we could have subgroups.
The attendees will not be homogeneous, but I don’t think we will experience problems re differences in opinions and/or knowledge by a much greater degree than a local group might.
Thank you for taking the time to write this, any other considerations welcome.
Sure thing. I’m less concerned with the name than the collection of possibly-too-varied people it brings in, for the sake of the project. I imagine you’ll get a better sense though as you start it.