Open letter to uni-group organisers
I wrote this for the UK Group Organiser Retreat, but the message applies to all EA university group organisers, so I’m opening it up.
Hello!
I’m Toby, the Content Strategist for CEA’s Online Team, and also the guy who runs events and encourages people to write on the EA Forum.
I’d like to encourage you to write on the EA Forum, and in turn, to encourage your group members to do the same. As sceptical EAs, you might have some questions about that. Here are some answers:
Why write on the EA Forum? As an individual, especially a student or early-career, writing on the Forum is a good way to build a reputation in the EA community. Being a thoughtful poster (or commenter) can earn you kudos with hiring managers and people who are asked to recommend candidates. You also get other benefits — you can practice reasoning like an EA, get detailed feedback on ideas as they develop, and build a network of people you can ask for help with a project.
Why do I want you to write on the EA Forum? Discourse on the EA Forum affects what the EA movement does, in ways that are sometimes very direct and sometimes nebulous. More thoughtful people on the EA Forum would make these conversations go even better. I care about them going well, so I’d like you to take part.
When should I encourage someone to write on the EA Forum? Wherever there are reputational upsides, there are downsides too. Not everyone should post everything on the EA Forum. However, people are often too intimidated by the Forum — posts that the Forum doesn’t like don’t get much karma, and therefore the reputational downside is bounded.
The biggest concern is wasting your time, and students have time — busy students, especially. So, if someone has good advice they’ve given to a few members of your group, a doc they’ve sent round and others have found useful, or an idea that your group enjoys listening to, they should consider posting.
If you or a member of your group would benefit from support or feedback in your post writing (at the ideas stage, or when you have a full doc), please contact me (Toby Tremlett) on the EA Forum. I’m really keen to hear from you, and I’d love to help you start posting,
Cheers,
Toby
Hello university group organisers!
Please write on the Forum. I like reading your posts, and whether it is about success or failure I think there’s always stuff that can be learned from you and what you do. I also think that writing on the forum is a really easy way to get yourself and your skillsets known in the EA community, which is presumably something you would like to happen.
I know that a need for self-reliance, fear of failure, and easily activated sense of rejection can feel paralysing sometimes, particularly when you’re somewhere in the 18-22 age range. I want to reassure you that I was a total reclusive nerd with a developing pretty serious mental health condition age 18, and through a series of screw-ups and being carried by a bunch of various (admittedly non-EA but they’re much of a muchness) community support mechanisms I’m now 28 and a pretty successful community-builder. You’re in this for the long game, and we all around the EA community know it and want to help pull you through.
Also I have never seen CEA pull groups funding from an organiser because they posted something imperfect on the Forum. To my knowledge it doesn’t happen and won’t ever happen. Worst that would ever happen is your post not getting much attention, and really that is no worse than not having posted in the first place.
Hi! The Writing on the Forum session at the retreat was super useful, and I think it is 90% of the reason I have the confidence to even comment here. I was thinking of creating a post which has a summary of different university organisers’ experiences on balancing their degree with organising a uni group. I think this would be super useful for me, and other new uni organisers. Do you think this would be an okay post?
That’s awesome Kashvi! And yep, that sounds like a straightforwardly useful post—great idea!
LMK if you want to run it past me before posting (though if you’re comfortable, feel free to just post).
I think that sounds like a great post! I’m looking forward to it :)
Same here! Thanks for the boost—posted yesterday and ended up with a lot of engagement and a good confidence boost from the process! :)
It’s good to know that others want group organizers and members writing, and I think this post changed my impression to some degree.
I was (and still am, to some degree) conflicted. On the one hand, low context people writing can hurt the quality of the average post or comment. On the other hand, it helps in the ways that you describe.
Already sent this post to a few organizers that I hope join me in (1) writing on the forum and (2) encouraging group members to do so as well.
Thanks for sharing it Noah! The offer of feedback extends to them.
“On the one hand, low context people writing can hurt the quality of the average post or comment” I think this is a good point, even though the karma system does a decent job of bounding the effect that low context writing hurts the Forum user experience.
We have some internal quality metrics, and we’re working on more to help us keep an eye on this. If it (too much low quality content) becomes a major issue, there are steps we can take (more of a rigorous on-boarding process for example, or a larger percentage of posts being moved to personal blog, or a ‘rejected’ page).
Either way, it’s not something that individual authors should worry about when considering whether to post.