Catalyst (biosecurity conference funded by the Long-Term Future Fund) was incredibly educational and fun.
Random scattered takeaways:
1. I knew going in that everybody there will be much more knowledgeable about bio than I was. I was right. (Maybe more than half the people there had PhDs?)
2. Nonetheless, I felt like most conversations were very approachable and informative for me, from Chris Bakerlee explaining the very basics of genetics to me, to asking Anders Sandberg about some research he did that was relevant to my interests, to Tara Kirk Sell detailing recent advances in technological solutions in biosecurity, to random workshops where novel ideas were proposed...
3. There’s a strong sense of energy and excitement from everybody at the conference, much more than other conferences I’ve been in (including EA Global).
4. From casual conversations in EA-land, I get the general sense that work in biosecurity was fraught with landmines and information hazards, so it was oddly refreshing to hear so many people talk openly about exciting new possibilities to de-risk biological threats and promote a healthier future, while still being fully cognizant of the scary challenges ahead. I guess I didn’t imagine there were so many interesting and “safe” topics in biosecurity!
5. I got a lot more personally worried about coronavirus than I was before the conference, to the point where I think it makes sense to start making some initial preparations and anticipate lifestyle changes.
6. There was a lot more DIY/Community Bio representation at the conference than I would have expected. I suspect this had to do with the organizers’ backgrounds; I imagine that if most other people were to organize biosecurity conferences, it’d be skewed academic a lot more.
7. I didn’t meet many (any?) people with a public health or epidemiology background.
8. The Stanford representation was really high, including many people who have never been to the local Stanford EA club.
9. A reasonable number of people at the conference were a) reasonably interested in effective altruism b) live in the general SF area and c) excited to meet/network with EAs in the area. This made me slightly more optimistic (from a high prior) about the value of doing good community building work in EA SF.
10. Man, the organizers of Catalyst are really competent. I’m jealous.
11. I gave significant amounts of money to the Long-Term Future Fund (which funded Catalyst), so I’m glad Catalyst turned out well. It’s really hard to forecast the counterfactual success of long-reach plans like this one, but naively it looks like this seems like the right approach to help build out the pipeline for biosecurity.
12. Wow, evolution is really cool.
13. Talking to Anders Sandberg made me slightly more optimistic about the value of a few weird ideas in philosophy I had recently, and that maybe I can make progress on them (since they seem unusually neglected).
14. Catalyst had this cool thing where they had public “long conversations” where instead of a panel discussion, they’d have two people on stage at a time, and after a few minutes one of the two people get rotated out. I’m personally not totally sold on the format but I’d be excited to see more experiments like that.
15. Usually, conferences or other conversational groups I’m in have one of two failure modes: 1) there’s an obvious hierarchy (based on credentials, social signaling, or just that a few people have way more domain knowledge than others) or 2) people are overly egalitarian and let useless digressions/opinions clog up the conversational space. Surprisingly neither happened much here, despite an incredibly heterogeneous group (from college sophomores to lead PIs of academic biology labs to biotech CEOs to DiY enthusiasts to health security experts to randos like me)
16. Man, it seems really good to have more conferences like this, where there’s a shared interest but everybody come from different fields so it’s less obviously hierarchal/status-jockeying.
17. I should probably attend more conferences/network more in general.
18. Being the “dumbest person in the room” gave me a lot more affordance to ask silly questions and understand new stuff from experts. I actually don’t think I was that annoying, surprisingly enough (people seemed happy enough to chat with me).
19. Partially because of the energy in the conference, the few times where I had to present EA, I mostly focused on the “hinge of history/weird futuristic ideas are important and we’re a group of people who take ideas seriously and try our best despite a lot of confusion” angle of EA, rather than the “serious people who do the important, neglected and obviously good things” angle that I usually go for. I think it went well with my audience today, though I still don’t have a solid policy of navigating this in general.
20. Man, I need something more impressive on my bio than “unusually good at memes.”
Publication bias alert: Not everybody liked the conference as much as I did. Someone I know and respect thought some of the talks weren’t very good (I agreed with them about the specific examples, but didn’t think it mattered because really good ideas/conversations/networking at an event + gestalt feel is much more important for whether an event is worthwhile to me than a few duds).
That said, on a meta level, you might expect that people who really liked (or hated, I suppose) a conference/event/book to write detailed notes about it than people who were lukewarm about it.
11. I gave significant amounts of money to the Long-Term Future Fund (which funded Catalyst), so I’m glad Catalyst turned out well. It’s really hard to forecast the counterfactual success of long-reach plans like this one, but naively it looks like this seems like the right approach to help build out the pipeline for biosecurity.
I am glad to hear that! I sadly didn’t end up having the time to go, but I’ve been excited about the project for a while.
I’d really appreciate ideas for how to try to confer some of what it was like to people who couldn’t make it. We recorded some of the talks and intend to edit + upload them, we’re writing a “how to organize a conference” postmortem / report, and one attendee is planning to write a magazine article, but I’m not sure what else would be useful. Would another post like this be helpful?
We recorded some of the talks and intend to edit + upload them, we’re writing a “how to organize a conference” postmortem / report, and one attendee is planning to write a magazine article
That all sounds useful and interesting to me!
Would another post like this be helpful?
I think multiple posts following events on the personal experiences from multiple people (organizers and attendees) can be useful simply for the diversity of their perspectives. Regarding Catalyst in particular I’m curious about the variety of backgrounds of the attendees and how their backgrounds shaped their goals and experiences during the meeting.
cross-posted from Facebook.
Catalyst (biosecurity conference funded by the Long-Term Future Fund) was incredibly educational and fun.
Random scattered takeaways:
1. I knew going in that everybody there will be much more knowledgeable about bio than I was. I was right. (Maybe more than half the people there had PhDs?)
2. Nonetheless, I felt like most conversations were very approachable and informative for me, from Chris Bakerlee explaining the very basics of genetics to me, to asking Anders Sandberg about some research he did that was relevant to my interests, to Tara Kirk Sell detailing recent advances in technological solutions in biosecurity, to random workshops where novel ideas were proposed...
3. There’s a strong sense of energy and excitement from everybody at the conference, much more than other conferences I’ve been in (including EA Global).
4. From casual conversations in EA-land, I get the general sense that work in biosecurity was fraught with landmines and information hazards, so it was oddly refreshing to hear so many people talk openly about exciting new possibilities to de-risk biological threats and promote a healthier future, while still being fully cognizant of the scary challenges ahead. I guess I didn’t imagine there were so many interesting and “safe” topics in biosecurity!
5. I got a lot more personally worried about coronavirus than I was before the conference, to the point where I think it makes sense to start making some initial preparations and anticipate lifestyle changes.
6. There was a lot more DIY/Community Bio representation at the conference than I would have expected. I suspect this had to do with the organizers’ backgrounds; I imagine that if most other people were to organize biosecurity conferences, it’d be skewed academic a lot more.
7. I didn’t meet many (any?) people with a public health or epidemiology background.
8. The Stanford representation was really high, including many people who have never been to the local Stanford EA club.
9. A reasonable number of people at the conference were a) reasonably interested in effective altruism b) live in the general SF area and c) excited to meet/network with EAs in the area. This made me slightly more optimistic (from a high prior) about the value of doing good community building work in EA SF.
10. Man, the organizers of Catalyst are really competent. I’m jealous.
11. I gave significant amounts of money to the Long-Term Future Fund (which funded Catalyst), so I’m glad Catalyst turned out well. It’s really hard to forecast the counterfactual success of long-reach plans like this one, but naively it looks like this seems like the right approach to help build out the pipeline for biosecurity.
12. Wow, evolution is really cool.
13. Talking to Anders Sandberg made me slightly more optimistic about the value of a few weird ideas in philosophy I had recently, and that maybe I can make progress on them (since they seem unusually neglected).
14. Catalyst had this cool thing where they had public “long conversations” where instead of a panel discussion, they’d have two people on stage at a time, and after a few minutes one of the two people get rotated out. I’m personally not totally sold on the format but I’d be excited to see more experiments like that.
15. Usually, conferences or other conversational groups I’m in have one of two failure modes: 1) there’s an obvious hierarchy (based on credentials, social signaling, or just that a few people have way more domain knowledge than others) or 2) people are overly egalitarian and let useless digressions/opinions clog up the conversational space. Surprisingly neither happened much here, despite an incredibly heterogeneous group (from college sophomores to lead PIs of academic biology labs to biotech CEOs to DiY enthusiasts to health security experts to randos like me)
16. Man, it seems really good to have more conferences like this, where there’s a shared interest but everybody come from different fields so it’s less obviously hierarchal/status-jockeying.
17. I should probably attend more conferences/network more in general.
18. Being the “dumbest person in the room” gave me a lot more affordance to ask silly questions and understand new stuff from experts. I actually don’t think I was that annoying, surprisingly enough (people seemed happy enough to chat with me).
19. Partially because of the energy in the conference, the few times where I had to present EA, I mostly focused on the “hinge of history/weird futuristic ideas are important and we’re a group of people who take ideas seriously and try our best despite a lot of confusion” angle of EA, rather than the “serious people who do the important, neglected and obviously good things” angle that I usually go for. I think it went well with my audience today, though I still don’t have a solid policy of navigating this in general.
20. Man, I need something more impressive on my bio than “unusually good at memes.”
Publication bias alert: Not everybody liked the conference as much as I did. Someone I know and respect thought some of the talks weren’t very good (I agreed with them about the specific examples, but didn’t think it mattered because really good ideas/conversations/networking at an event + gestalt feel is much more important for whether an event is worthwhile to me than a few duds).
That said, on a meta level, you might expect that people who really liked (or hated, I suppose) a conference/event/book to write detailed notes about it than people who were lukewarm about it.
I am glad to hear that! I sadly didn’t end up having the time to go, but I’ve been excited about the project for a while.
Thanks for your report! I was interested but couldn’t manage the cross country trip and definitely curious to hear what it was like.
I’d really appreciate ideas for how to try to confer some of what it was like to people who couldn’t make it. We recorded some of the talks and intend to edit + upload them, we’re writing a “how to organize a conference” postmortem / report, and one attendee is planning to write a magazine article, but I’m not sure what else would be useful. Would another post like this be helpful?
That all sounds useful and interesting to me!
I think multiple posts following events on the personal experiences from multiple people (organizers and attendees) can be useful simply for the diversity of their perspectives. Regarding Catalyst in particular I’m curious about the variety of backgrounds of the attendees and how their backgrounds shaped their goals and experiences during the meeting.