After going through my first EAG this past weekend, I am left pretty confused about the rationale for the competitive application process.
I know of two main categories of people who seem to have applied and gotten rejected — people very personally invested in EA as a cause but deemed unworthy of networking opportunities, and semi-important DC types who are maybe EA-curious but were deemed insufficiently committed to EA. But I don’t know that I really understand why the event would have been worse if it had featured more people from both of those categories. To CEA’s enormous credit they have a really good system in place of one-on-one meetings, formal office hours, and informal hangouts and there was plenty of stuff happening both formally and informally on the fringes of the event. It all seemed really thoughtful and well-designed. So thoughtful and well-designed that it wouldn’t have in any way been undermined by having more merely curious or somehow low powered people around.
I sort of get the idea of doing a light basic screening before you let people in — make sure they’re not scammers or wreckers or what have you. But rejecting people who are totally sincere in their desire to attend an EA conference seems potentially very costly. Is it just a question of money? The food was maybe nicer and more plentiful than it needed to be. In the limit, people needing to buy their own lunch seems like a much less damaging possibility than making people feel rejected.
From my understanding, it is almost certainly not a question of money. They have the option of making admissions less competitive but increasing the ticket price and then having a competitive process for financial aid, but they do not think that that is a good option.
I too find money being an issue very unlikely. They rented out a government venue for the weekend with staff serving vegan food and cleaning up after you as if you were royalty. Maybe I’m just not used to this kind of lifestyle due to me a couple of years ago having to be a busser for similar venues, but I still found it odd how an organization that is meant to be about using our ‘limited resources to do the most good’ must’ve spent big bucks on this venue.
Do you think it would have been bad if the “semi-important DC types who are maybe EA-curious” had had a bad time at the conference? Perhaps because it was weirder than they expected, or had interactions with different norms than they expected?
Perhaps if the norms were posted somewhere upfront, then the EA curious types could self select for attendance. I’m still not sure what the norms are after doing all the research for this post. A video of the conference with narration of the setup/interviews with attendees or just a list of norms on the EAG information page would be helpful to understand what the conference is like.
Re the 1st category of people, I don’t really think of being told “try an (in-person) EAGx first” as rejection, which is my understanding of the OP’s situation.
After going through my first EAG this past weekend, I am left pretty confused about the rationale for the competitive application process.
I know of two main categories of people who seem to have applied and gotten rejected — people very personally invested in EA as a cause but deemed unworthy of networking opportunities, and semi-important DC types who are maybe EA-curious but were deemed insufficiently committed to EA. But I don’t know that I really understand why the event would have been worse if it had featured more people from both of those categories. To CEA’s enormous credit they have a really good system in place of one-on-one meetings, formal office hours, and informal hangouts and there was plenty of stuff happening both formally and informally on the fringes of the event. It all seemed really thoughtful and well-designed. So thoughtful and well-designed that it wouldn’t have in any way been undermined by having more merely curious or somehow low powered people around.
I sort of get the idea of doing a light basic screening before you let people in — make sure they’re not scammers or wreckers or what have you. But rejecting people who are totally sincere in their desire to attend an EA conference seems potentially very costly. Is it just a question of money? The food was maybe nicer and more plentiful than it needed to be. In the limit, people needing to buy their own lunch seems like a much less damaging possibility than making people feel rejected.
From my understanding, it is almost certainly not a question of money. They have the option of making admissions less competitive but increasing the ticket price and then having a competitive process for financial aid, but they do not think that that is a good option.
CEA’s concern with allowing a wider range of people into the conference seems to be that they’d take up the time of the people CEA most wants to be at an EAG.
That’s coherent; I guess I just disagree with the calculus.
“most prestigious” seems like unfair wording, prestigious != people that CEA most wants to be at an EAG
Edited.
I too find money being an issue very unlikely. They rented out a government venue for the weekend with staff serving vegan food and cleaning up after you as if you were royalty. Maybe I’m just not used to this kind of lifestyle due to me a couple of years ago having to be a busser for similar venues, but I still found it odd how an organization that is meant to be about using our ‘limited resources to do the most good’ must’ve spent big bucks on this venue.
Do you think it would have been bad if the “semi-important DC types who are maybe EA-curious” had had a bad time at the conference? Perhaps because it was weirder than they expected, or had interactions with different norms than they expected?
Perhaps if the norms were posted somewhere upfront, then the EA curious types could self select for attendance. I’m still not sure what the norms are after doing all the research for this post. A video of the conference with narration of the setup/interviews with attendees or just a list of norms on the EAG information page would be helpful to understand what the conference is like.
Re the 1st category of people, I don’t really think of being told “try an (in-person) EAGx first” as rejection, which is my understanding of the OP’s situation.