Do you believe the EA communityâs overall level of investment in community building is adequate/âtoo low/âtoo high?
(While this question isnât strictly about CEA itself, Iâd imagine a key motivating belief for many CEA staff members would be that community building work is neglected relative to other high impact opportunities.)
I think we could be doing a lot more to support community building using events! This is one reason Iâm so excited about the two roles I posted for my team.
In particular, Iâm always inspired by how well EAGx teams do. We provide them a bit of support, mentorship, and money and they create events that can be quite impactful. One of the events roles we posted, the Community Events Manager, is meant to take this to the next level by supporting a portfolio of community run events (which could include a wide range of events formats!). We have seen community members take initiative to run things on their own with very little money and support and this feels awesome and like a shame. Iâm impressed with what folks have been able to do on there own, but it seems like we are leaving value on the table by not helping community run events more. Iâm hopeful that we will find someone who can fix that!
I also think our internal events could do more with the right person, which is why we posted a pretty broad second job of Events Generalist. I think Iâve fallen down by not doing as much as impact analysis on events as I could. In my perfect world I would add someone to the team who could help me with that. But even adding another team member who could help run targeted retreats or scale up our mentorship around events or a variety of other things would mean we could invest more in the community. Iâm hopeful that we will find someone who can help us do that!
I sometimes speak to people who arenât aware how many career paths in community building there are, even outside of EA. I do think this causes there to be fewer community builders than there âshouldâ be.
It feels hard to make really broad statements though; some peopleâs skills and interests are pretty clearly not a fit for community building, and I donât think they should try to force it.
(Sharing impressions, thereâs no well-developed theory here)
Intuitively, Iâd say somewhere between âtoo lowâ and âadequateâ.
Iâm not very involved in groups work, so my knowledge on that side is limited, but I donât have the impression that lots of potentially awesome group leaders arenât fulfilling their potential â nothing like that. But I do think that many people who donât see themselves as âcommunity buildingâ types should consider how they can contribute in small ways:
Being one more friendly/âexperienced face at a local event
Giving helpful advice to someone outside of EA whoâs trying to make some relevant life decision (even via something as simple as âtry GiveWell, they have great stuffâ or âthe 80,000 Hours career tool might be helpfulâ)
Sharing a quick Facebook post about their next donation, to make more of their social network aware of the general idea of âeffective givingâ (and to catch any of those people who might be in the very real category of âhears about EA, instantly soldâ)
These are all very generic ideas, but depending on other things about someone (language fluency, membership in other communities, personal network), there may be other smallish things they can do. It would be interesting to see everyone past a certain level of EA familiarity (e.g. has done a fellowship or read multiple books) spend 15 minutes asking themselves âhow can I do one small thing to grow the community?â
Do you believe the EA communityâs overall level of investment in community building is adequate/âtoo low/âtoo high?
(While this question isnât strictly about CEA itself, Iâd imagine a key motivating belief for many CEA staff members would be that community building work is neglected relative to other high impact opportunities.)
Iâll answer from an events perspective:
I think we could be doing a lot more to support community building using events! This is one reason Iâm so excited about the two roles I posted for my team.
In particular, Iâm always inspired by how well EAGx teams do. We provide them a bit of support, mentorship, and money and they create events that can be quite impactful. One of the events roles we posted, the Community Events Manager, is meant to take this to the next level by supporting a portfolio of community run events (which could include a wide range of events formats!). We have seen community members take initiative to run things on their own with very little money and support and this feels awesome and like a shame. Iâm impressed with what folks have been able to do on there own, but it seems like we are leaving value on the table by not helping community run events more. Iâm hopeful that we will find someone who can fix that!
I also think our internal events could do more with the right person, which is why we posted a pretty broad second job of Events Generalist. I think Iâve fallen down by not doing as much as impact analysis on events as I could. In my perfect world I would add someone to the team who could help me with that. But even adding another team member who could help run targeted retreats or scale up our mentorship around events or a variety of other things would mean we could invest more in the community. Iâm hopeful that we will find someone who can help us do that!
I sometimes speak to people who arenât aware how many career paths in community building there are, even outside of EA. I do think this causes there to be fewer community builders than there âshouldâ be.
It feels hard to make really broad statements though; some peopleâs skills and interests are pretty clearly not a fit for community building, and I donât think they should try to force it.
(Sharing impressions, thereâs no well-developed theory here)
Intuitively, Iâd say somewhere between âtoo lowâ and âadequateâ.
Iâm not very involved in groups work, so my knowledge on that side is limited, but I donât have the impression that lots of potentially awesome group leaders arenât fulfilling their potential â nothing like that. But I do think that many people who donât see themselves as âcommunity buildingâ types should consider how they can contribute in small ways:
Being one more friendly/âexperienced face at a local event
Giving helpful advice to someone outside of EA whoâs trying to make some relevant life decision (even via something as simple as âtry GiveWell, they have great stuffâ or âthe 80,000 Hours career tool might be helpfulâ)
Sharing a quick Facebook post about their next donation, to make more of their social network aware of the general idea of âeffective givingâ (and to catch any of those people who might be in the very real category of âhears about EA, instantly soldâ)
These are all very generic ideas, but depending on other things about someone (language fluency, membership in other communities, personal network), there may be other smallish things they can do. It would be interesting to see everyone past a certain level of EA familiarity (e.g. has done a fellowship or read multiple books) spend 15 minutes asking themselves âhow can I do one small thing to grow the community?â