As of August 24, 2023, I no longer endorse this post for a few reasons.
I think university groups should primarily be focused on encouraging people to learn a lot of things and becoming a venue/community for people to try to become excellent at things that the world really needs, and this will mostly look like creating exciting and welcoming environments for co-working and discussion on campus. In part this is driven by the things that I think made HAIST successful, and in part it’s driven by thinking there’s some merit to the unfavorable link to this post in “University EA Groups Need Fixing.”
I also think retreats are more costly than I realized when writing, and (relatedly) if you’re going to organize a retreat or workshop or whatever, it should probably have a theory of change and driven by a target audience’s area of interest and background (e.g., “early-career people interested in AI policy who haven’t spent time in DC come and meet AI policy people in DC”) rather than general-purpose uni group bonding.
I also think “retreat” is basically the wrong word for what these events are; at least the ones I’ve run have generally had enough subject-matter-driven content that “workshop” is a more appropriate term.
That said, I do still think university groups should consider doing retreats/workshops, depending on their capacity, the specific needs of their group, and the extent to which they buy the arguments for/against prioritizing them over other programs.
As of August 24, 2023, I no longer endorse this post for a few reasons.
I think university groups should primarily be focused on encouraging people to learn a lot of things and becoming a venue/community for people to try to become excellent at things that the world really needs, and this will mostly look like creating exciting and welcoming environments for co-working and discussion on campus. In part this is driven by the things that I think made HAIST successful, and in part it’s driven by thinking there’s some merit to the unfavorable link to this post in “University EA Groups Need Fixing.”
I also think retreats are more costly than I realized when writing, and (relatedly) if you’re going to organize a retreat or workshop or whatever, it should probably have a theory of change and driven by a target audience’s area of interest and background (e.g., “early-career people interested in AI policy who haven’t spent time in DC come and meet AI policy people in DC”) rather than general-purpose uni group bonding.
I also think “retreat” is basically the wrong word for what these events are; at least the ones I’ve run have generally had enough subject-matter-driven content that “workshop” is a more appropriate term.
That said, I do still think university groups should consider doing retreats/workshops, depending on their capacity, the specific needs of their group, and the extent to which they buy the arguments for/against prioritizing them over other programs.
Edited the top of the post to reflect this.