This is a very helpful post. I’m surprised the events are so expensive, but breakdown of costs and explanations make sense.
That said, this makes me much more skeptical about the value of EAG given the alternative potential uses of funds—even just in terms of other types of events.
As suggested by Ozzie, I’d definitely like to see a comparison with the potential value of smaller events, as well as experimentation.
Spending $2k per person might be good value, but I think we could do better. Perhaps there is an analogy with cash transfers as a benchmark—what event could someone put on if they were just given that money?
For example, with $2k, I expect I could hire a pub in central London for an evening (or maybe a whole day), with perhaps around 100 people attending. So that’s $20 per person, or 1% of the cost of EAG. Would they get as much benefit from attending my event as attending EAG? No, but I’d bet they’d get more than 1% of the benefit.
Now what if 10 or 20 people pooled their $2k per person?
For example, with $2k, I expect I could hire a pub in central London for an evening (or maybe a whole day), with perhaps around 100 people attending. So that’s $20 per person, or 1% of the cost of EAG. Would they get as much benefit from attending my event as attending EAG? No, but I’d bet they’d get more than 1% of the benefit.
Worth noting these aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. It’s possible both running EAGs and running these smaller events are above current funding bars.
Firstly, I agree with Daniel that we should just do both. Smaller events like the one you’re suggesting here are worth doing (and I expect local EA groups do exactly this)
But I think there are effects that kick in only when events reach a certain size, e.g.
Speakers/experts will travel if they can speak to hundreds of people, but not to a room.
Similarly, if travel is costly for attendees, they might only make the trip for one large event, but not for a small event.
If you’re looking for new opportunities, you want to speak to a wide range of people, and you might not get that with a small event.
FWIW, we have funded lots of small retreats and compared their cost-effectiveness with EAGx events, the post about that is here. The retreats were much more expensive than the pub idea, but we found that they produced a similar amount of value per person despite being almost twice the cost per person. EAG is even more expensive per person, but has the effects described above.
Just want to add that many of the retreats organised by national organisations or uni groups are a fraction of the cost of the retreats analysed in the link Ollie posted. Our most expensive retreat had a per-person cost of around EUR 260. The average retreat analysed in that post had a per-person cost of just under EUR 1,500. See my comment for further details.
The US is 9th on numbeo.com’s cost of living plus rent index, with a score of 61, meaning it’s about 61% as expensive as New York City. The Netherlands is 20th (50.9), the UK is 23rd (48.1), and Germany is 30th (46.5).
For example, with $2k, I expect I could hire a pub in central London for an evening (or maybe a whole day), with perhaps around 100 people attending. So that’s $20 per person, or 1% of the cost of EAG. Would they get as much benefit from attending my event as attending EAG? No, but I’d bet they’d get more than 1% of the benefit.
Actually, I’m not sure this is right. An evening has around 1⁄10 of the networking duration of a weekend, and number of connections are proportional to time spent networking and to number of participants squared. If this is 1/10th the attendance and 1/10th the duration, you’re getting around 1/1000th the networking value for 1/1000th the cost, so not obviously better than an EAG weekend that costs $2M and has 1000 participants, maybe worse when you factor in people’s time cost of getting to the pub as a fraction of the event duration, or maybe better if they prefer not to spend a whole weekend.
and number of connections are proportional to time spent networking and to number of participants squared
This seems wrong, 1-1s are gated by the fact that there are only so many 30 minute slots in a day. Doubling the number of attendees might allow someone to be slightly more selective in who they network with but it doesn’t let them do 4x as many meetings.
This is a very helpful post. I’m surprised the events are so expensive, but breakdown of costs and explanations make sense.
That said, this makes me much more skeptical about the value of EAG given the alternative potential uses of funds—even just in terms of other types of events.
As suggested by Ozzie, I’d definitely like to see a comparison with the potential value of smaller events, as well as experimentation.
Spending $2k per person might be good value, but I think we could do better. Perhaps there is an analogy with cash transfers as a benchmark—what event could someone put on if they were just given that money?
For example, with $2k, I expect I could hire a pub in central London for an evening (or maybe a whole day), with perhaps around 100 people attending. So that’s $20 per person, or 1% of the cost of EAG. Would they get as much benefit from attending my event as attending EAG? No, but I’d bet they’d get more than 1% of the benefit.
Now what if 10 or 20 people pooled their $2k per person?
Worth noting these aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. It’s possible both running EAGs and running these smaller events are above current funding bars.
Firstly, I agree with Daniel that we should just do both. Smaller events like the one you’re suggesting here are worth doing (and I expect local EA groups do exactly this)
But I think there are effects that kick in only when events reach a certain size, e.g.
Speakers/experts will travel if they can speak to hundreds of people, but not to a room.
Similarly, if travel is costly for attendees, they might only make the trip for one large event, but not for a small event.
If you’re looking for new opportunities, you want to speak to a wide range of people, and you might not get that with a small event.
FWIW, we have funded lots of small retreats and compared their cost-effectiveness with EAGx events, the post about that is here. The retreats were much more expensive than the pub idea, but we found that they produced a similar amount of value per person despite being almost twice the cost per person. EAG is even more expensive per person, but has the effects described above.
Just want to add that many of the retreats organised by national organisations or uni groups are a fraction of the cost of the retreats analysed in the link Ollie posted. Our most expensive retreat had a per-person cost of around EUR 260. The average retreat analysed in that post had a per-person cost of just under EUR 1,500. See my comment for further details.
Agree, our most expensive retreat this year was at EUR ~160 per person, which was fully funded for participants (excluding our working time though).
Other retreats we did were either cheaper or partially funded by the participants themselves.
Are those in cheaper countries than the US/UK?
Pretty comparable according to numbeo.com.
The US is 9th on numbeo.com’s cost of living plus rent index, with a score of 61, meaning it’s about 61% as expensive as New York City. The Netherlands is 20th (50.9), the UK is 23rd (48.1), and Germany is 30th (46.5).
Note that London is much more expensive than a UK average would suggest
I understand your point, but typically retreats aren’t hosted in capital cities.
Actually, I’m not sure this is right. An evening has around 1⁄10 of the networking duration of a weekend, and number of connections are proportional to time spent networking and to number of participants squared. If this is 1/10th the attendance and 1/10th the duration, you’re getting around 1/1000th the networking value for 1/1000th the cost, so not obviously better than an EAG weekend that costs $2M and has 1000 participants, maybe worse when you factor in people’s time cost of getting to the pub as a fraction of the event duration, or maybe better if they prefer not to spend a whole weekend.
This seems wrong, 1-1s are gated by the fact that there are only so many 30 minute slots in a day. Doubling the number of attendees might allow someone to be slightly more selective in who they network with but it doesn’t let them do 4x as many meetings.