[I worked with Kaleem on EAGxBoston and think I’m responsible for (re)naming EAGx]
Thanks for writing this up!
In the past, it seems like the community has typically considered EAGxs to be an event which is smaller in scale, less professionally organized, and aimed at a different audience compared to EAGs (maybe EAGs are for highly engaged and/or experienced members of the community, whereas EAGxs are for those who are newer to EA, like people who had just completed an intro fellowship)
This is still basically how we’re thinking about them (though I think they’re much more professionally organised now, thanks to larger budgets). The “x” also denotes independently organised and I think that is a useful distinction to make. I definitely could make this clearer though :)
FWIW, I think EAGxBoston was unusually large and attracted EAs of all stripes because it was the first post-pandemic conference in the US. I think it’s possible you’re updating too much on that when thinking about how to categorise events and that future EAGx conferences in the US will be more obviously different, though still polished and professionally organised.
That said, this prompted me to think harder about whether EAGx is the right name. I’m sure you’ll hear from me once I get time to think about this (it isn’t high priority for me).
[I worked with Kaleem on EAGxBoston and think I’m responsible for (re)naming EAGx]
Thanks for writing this up!
This is still basically how we’re thinking about them (though I think they’re much more professionally organised now, thanks to larger budgets). The “x” also denotes independently organised and I think that is a useful distinction to make. I definitely could make this clearer though :)
FWIW, I think EAGxBoston was unusually large and attracted EAs of all stripes because it was the first post-pandemic conference in the US. I think it’s possible you’re updating too much on that when thinking about how to categorise events and that future EAGx conferences in the US will be more obviously different, though still polished and professionally organised.
That said, this prompted me to think harder about whether EAGx is the right name. I’m sure you’ll hear from me once I get time to think about this (it isn’t high priority for me).