I guess it depends on the reason they’re isolated. And the more “expensive” interventions in terms of inconvenience to regulars should be weighted by the excepted gain. A proxy for that might be the number of isolated EAs. Examples of interventions would be diversifying meetup times/locations if it’s due to time/location conflicts. It might be easier to test this by adding online events and comparing the number of new attendees.
Marisa mentioned that 1-1’s (with the organizers or other members) would also be beneficial and would reduce the awkwardness of joining a meetup where everyone but you knows each other.
Another idea might be to sponsor local groups by providing support or training, like how (I imagine) EA Philippines does to their local chapters. But seems easier for a country group to do this to a city/uni group, rather than a city group “sponsoring” another city.
Agree with Sami’s comment below. Virtual events are certainly a good way to get people from more isolated parts of the region engaged, but if 90% of the attendees already know each other from in-person events, that may be even more isolating. I suspect this is fairly easy to mitigate though if the organiser is conscientious about it.
It might be worth connecting them with other virtual communities too. Besides us, there are lots of virtual groups popping up (Giving What We Can, EA for Christians, EA for Jews, the EA Hispanic group, EA Consulting, Effective Animal Advocacy, etc.) which might be good for getting people engaged if your group doesn’t run virtual events very often. (FWIW they are also very welcome to get involved with EA Anywhere—we have some members in metro areas of local groups but who are just too far away to come to most in-person events.)
I think a lot of this will also be case-by-case depending on where the person is in their EA involvement, and a lot of those rules won’t be that much different from engaging someone who’s not in an isolated area. It’s mostly a matter of making sure the usual pathways through “the funnel” are accessible to them, even if they aren’t able to attend in-person events.
Do you have suggestions on ways local groups can create ways for people in their region who are more isolated to be engaged ?
I guess it depends on the reason they’re isolated. And the more “expensive” interventions in terms of inconvenience to regulars should be weighted by the excepted gain. A proxy for that might be the number of isolated EAs.
Examples of interventions would be diversifying meetup times/locations if it’s due to time/location conflicts. It might be easier to test this by adding online events and comparing the number of new attendees.
Marisa mentioned that 1-1’s (with the organizers or other members) would also be beneficial and would reduce the awkwardness of joining a meetup where everyone but you knows each other.
Another idea might be to sponsor local groups by providing support or training, like how (I imagine) EA Philippines does to their local chapters. But seems easier for a country group to do this to a city/uni group, rather than a city group “sponsoring” another city.
Agree with Sami’s comment below. Virtual events are certainly a good way to get people from more isolated parts of the region engaged, but if 90% of the attendees already know each other from in-person events, that may be even more isolating. I suspect this is fairly easy to mitigate though if the organiser is conscientious about it.
It might be worth connecting them with other virtual communities too. Besides us, there are lots of virtual groups popping up (Giving What We Can, EA for Christians, EA for Jews, the EA Hispanic group, EA Consulting, Effective Animal Advocacy, etc.) which might be good for getting people engaged if your group doesn’t run virtual events very often. (FWIW they are also very welcome to get involved with EA Anywhere—we have some members in metro areas of local groups but who are just too far away to come to most in-person events.)
I think a lot of this will also be case-by-case depending on where the person is in their EA involvement, and a lot of those rules won’t be that much different from engaging someone who’s not in an isolated area. It’s mostly a matter of making sure the usual pathways through “the funnel” are accessible to them, even if they aren’t able to attend in-person events.