I feel like EAs might be sleeping a bit on digital meetups/conferences.
My impression is that many people prefer in-person events to online ones. But at the same time, a lot of people hate needing to be in the Bay Area / London or having to travel to events.
There was one EAG online during the pandemic (I believe the others were EAGxs), and I had a pretty good experience there. Some downsides, but some strong upsides. It seemed very promising to me.
I’m particularly excited about VR. I have a Quest3, and have been impressed by the experience of chatting to people in VRChat. The main downside is that there aren’t any professional events in VR that would interest me. Quest 3s are expensive ($500), but far cheaper than housing and office space in Berkeley or London.
I’d also flag: 1. I think that video calls can be dramatically improved with better microphone and camera setups. These can cost $200 to $2k or so, but make a major difference. 2. I’ve been doing some digging into platforms similar to GatherTown. I found GatherTown fairly ugly, off-putting, and limited. SpatialChat seems promising, though it’s more expensive. Zoom seems to be experimenting in the space with products like Zoom Huddles (for coworking in small groups), but these are new. 3. I like Focusmate, but think we could have better spaces for EAs/community members. 4. I think that people above the age of 25 or so find VR weird for what I’d describe as mostly status quo bias. Younger people seem to be far more willing and excited to hangout in VR. 5. I obviously think this is a larger business question. It seems like there was a wave of enthusiasm for remote work at COVID, and this has mostly dried up. However, there are still a ton of remote workers. My guess is that businesses are making a major mistake by not investing enough in better remote software and setups. 6. Organizing community is hard, even if its online. I’d like to see more attempts to pay people to organize online coworking spaces and meetups more. 7. I think that online events/conferences have become associated with the most junior talent. This seems like a pity to me. 8. I expect that different online events should come with different communities and different restrictions. A lot of existing online events/conferences are open to everyone, but then this means that they will be optimized for the most junior people. I think that we want a mix here. 9. Personally, I abhor the idea that I need to couple the place where I physically live with the friends and colleagues I have. I’d very much prefer optimizing for these two separately. 10. I think our community would generally be better off if remote work were easier to do. I’d expect this would help on multiple fronts—better talent, happier talent, lower expenses, more resilience from national politics, etc. This is extra relevant giving the current US political climate—this makes it tougher to recommend that others immigrate to the US or even visit (and the situation might get worse). 11. I’d definitely admit that remote work has a lot of downsides right now, especially with the current tech. So I’m not recommending that all orgs go remote. Just that we work on improving our remote/online infrastructure.
Have you checked out the EA Gather? It’s been languishing a bit for want of more input from me, but I still find it a really pleasant place for coworking, and it’s had several events run or part-run on there—though you’d have to check in with the organisers to see how successful they were.
I assumed it’s been mostly dead for a while (haven’t heard about it for a few months). I’m very supportive of it, would like to see it (and more) do well.
It’s still in use, but it has the basic problem of EA services that unless there’s something to announce, there’s not really any socially acceptable way of advertising it.
I feel like EAs might be sleeping a bit on digital meetups/conferences.
My impression is that many people prefer in-person events to online ones. But at the same time, a lot of people hate needing to be in the Bay Area / London or having to travel to events.
There was one EAG online during the pandemic (I believe the others were EAGxs), and I had a pretty good experience there. Some downsides, but some strong upsides. It seemed very promising to me.
I’m particularly excited about VR. I have a Quest3, and have been impressed by the experience of chatting to people in VRChat. The main downside is that there aren’t any professional events in VR that would interest me. Quest 3s are expensive ($500), but far cheaper than housing and office space in Berkeley or London.
I’d also flag:
1. I think that video calls can be dramatically improved with better microphone and camera setups. These can cost $200 to $2k or so, but make a major difference.
2. I’ve been doing some digging into platforms similar to GatherTown. I found GatherTown fairly ugly, off-putting, and limited. SpatialChat seems promising, though it’s more expensive. Zoom seems to be experimenting in the space with products like Zoom Huddles (for coworking in small groups), but these are new.
3. I like Focusmate, but think we could have better spaces for EAs/community members.
4. I think that people above the age of 25 or so find VR weird for what I’d describe as mostly status quo bias. Younger people seem to be far more willing and excited to hangout in VR.
5. I obviously think this is a larger business question. It seems like there was a wave of enthusiasm for remote work at COVID, and this has mostly dried up. However, there are still a ton of remote workers. My guess is that businesses are making a major mistake by not investing enough in better remote software and setups.
6. Organizing community is hard, even if its online. I’d like to see more attempts to pay people to organize online coworking spaces and meetups more.
7. I think that online events/conferences have become associated with the most junior talent. This seems like a pity to me.
8. I expect that different online events should come with different communities and different restrictions. A lot of existing online events/conferences are open to everyone, but then this means that they will be optimized for the most junior people. I think that we want a mix here.
9. Personally, I abhor the idea that I need to couple the place where I physically live with the friends and colleagues I have. I’d very much prefer optimizing for these two separately.
10. I think our community would generally be better off if remote work were easier to do. I’d expect this would help on multiple fronts—better talent, happier talent, lower expenses, more resilience from national politics, etc. This is extra relevant giving the current US political climate—this makes it tougher to recommend that others immigrate to the US or even visit (and the situation might get worse).
11. I’d definitely admit that remote work has a lot of downsides right now, especially with the current tech. So I’m not recommending that all orgs go remote. Just that we work on improving our remote/online infrastructure.
Have you checked out the EA Gather? It’s been languishing a bit for want of more input from me, but I still find it a really pleasant place for coworking, and it’s had several events run or part-run on there—though you’d have to check in with the organisers to see how successful they were.
I assumed it’s been mostly dead for a while (haven’t heard about it for a few months). I’m very supportive of it, would like to see it (and more) do well.
It’s still in use, but it has the basic problem of EA services that unless there’s something to announce, there’s not really any socially acceptable way of advertising it.