Hey! Some quick takes from me (I work on the events team at CEA).
Overall, thanks so much for writing this :) I agree with many points and might well share this with future event organisers
I strongly agree with:
Prioritising venue and logistics, and I like the metaphor of the hierarchy of needs. In my experience, organisers who sorted out the venue and catering the soonest were typically most able to focus on how to squeeze out value from the event later.
Hire early—yep!
“Working with as few external vendors/agents as possible because it saves on hiring, vetting, and coordination time. ”
Less is more on content—EAGx organisers always seem to be worried about making sure there is a full schedule. Obviously, some structure to an event is usually good (unless you’re running an unconference) but that can be fairly minimal. I wish organisers spent more time identifying really valuable content and focusing on communications rather than maxxing out the schedule
Pre-event workshops to work out what to do—yep, and I think local EA groups are in a great position to lead on this sort of thing.
Post-event follow-up—I’ve been focusing on executing events this year, but plan on reviewing a bunch of data in the new year. FYI, we do conduct follow-ups and I believe the EAG team are looking into how to do this automatically next year.
Some points of disagreement
Peer-to-peer structures certainly sound nice but, in practice, event attendees typically report getting really valuable advice from more senior people, and much less so from their peers. I might adjust this to “seek advice from people who are only slightly ahead of you”. Those people typically have more time, but can share really valuable advice.
rather than do an event format because it’s been done before and seems effective.
^ I think it’s perfectly fine to repeat events that went well :) You can do this alongside experimentation.
I think some of the advice on project management is good but isn’t quite as simple to implement as you make out. Parts of this post read to me as “to ensure your project goes well, simply do project management well” which is a bit tautological. Usually, various things get in the way. In general, start everything earlier! That’s probably the one piece of advice that has the most leverage, in my view.
There’s a lot of “people should do X more”. I think that’s easier said than done, and I wish there was more “here’s a simple way to do X” in this post :)
thanks as always for the thoughtful comments ollie! I’ll respond to the P2P piece right now because I think there’s , but definitely want to come back to your other points.
I think our suggestion here stems from a more fundamental difference than just “make more of connection type X”—it was a pushback to the idea that your primary goal should just be to get advice. I think there are some tendencies towards too much deference and people not knowing what to do next (e.g. not knowing what to do after the intro fellowship).
Our theory of change here is something like: peers can invest significantly more time in you / getting to know you than senior people can and can support you over the course of your journey. So more P2P activities → more supportive / constructive friendships
It’s plausible that the solution here isn’t a P2P support group or something, and just “run more socials”.
I might also be more optimistic than others that well-structured programs which offer some guidance and accountability can help a lot in making P2P interactions more valuable, although I’m very unsure by how much.
I also think there are some benefits to signalling “it is possible to make progress on difficult issues with peers” is an important message to send (and I think events are a good time to signal such things).
Otherwise I agree—if the goal we’re striving for is “get people advice”—then it makes sense that senior people are ranked higher than peers. I think it would be great to see how we could better leverage senior peoples’ time. (and thanks for sharing attendee feedback on what kinds of interactions they find valuable.)
I also agree about doing more with people “slightly ahead of you”—we didn’t discuss it much, but on reflection it definitely feels like fairly low hanging fruit.
Got it. Agree P2P makes sense if your goal is to build your social network / support group and that this is also valuable. I guess this doesn’t need to replace the goal of seeking advice, and can be pursued in parallel :)
Hey! Some quick takes from me (I work on the events team at CEA).
Overall, thanks so much for writing this :) I agree with many points and might well share this with future event organisers
I strongly agree with:
Prioritising venue and logistics, and I like the metaphor of the hierarchy of needs. In my experience, organisers who sorted out the venue and catering the soonest were typically most able to focus on how to squeeze out value from the event later.
Hire early—yep!
“Working with as few external vendors/agents as possible because it saves on hiring, vetting, and coordination time. ”
Less is more on content—EAGx organisers always seem to be worried about making sure there is a full schedule. Obviously, some structure to an event is usually good (unless you’re running an unconference) but that can be fairly minimal. I wish organisers spent more time identifying really valuable content and focusing on communications rather than maxxing out the schedule
Pre-event workshops to work out what to do—yep, and I think local EA groups are in a great position to lead on this sort of thing.
Post-event follow-up—I’ve been focusing on executing events this year, but plan on reviewing a bunch of data in the new year. FYI, we do conduct follow-ups and I believe the EAG team are looking into how to do this automatically next year.
Some points of disagreement
Peer-to-peer structures certainly sound nice but, in practice, event attendees typically report getting really valuable advice from more senior people, and much less so from their peers. I might adjust this to “seek advice from people who are only slightly ahead of you”. Those people typically have more time, but can share really valuable advice.
^ I think it’s perfectly fine to repeat events that went well :) You can do this alongside experimentation.
I think some of the advice on project management is good but isn’t quite as simple to implement as you make out. Parts of this post read to me as “to ensure your project goes well, simply do project management well” which is a bit tautological. Usually, various things get in the way. In general, start everything earlier! That’s probably the one piece of advice that has the most leverage, in my view.
There’s a lot of “people should do X more”. I think that’s easier said than done, and I wish there was more “here’s a simple way to do X” in this post :)
Thanks again!
thanks as always for the thoughtful comments ollie! I’ll respond to the P2P piece right now because I think there’s , but definitely want to come back to your other points.
I think our suggestion here stems from a more fundamental difference than just “make more of connection type X”—it was a pushback to the idea that your primary goal should just be to get advice. I think there are some tendencies towards too much deference and people not knowing what to do next (e.g. not knowing what to do after the intro fellowship).
Our theory of change here is something like: peers can invest significantly more time in you / getting to know you than senior people can and can support you over the course of your journey. So more P2P activities → more supportive / constructive friendships
It’s plausible that the solution here isn’t a P2P support group or something, and just “run more socials”.
I might also be more optimistic than others that well-structured programs which offer some guidance and accountability can help a lot in making P2P interactions more valuable, although I’m very unsure by how much.
I also think there are some benefits to signalling “it is possible to make progress on difficult issues with peers” is an important message to send (and I think events are a good time to signal such things).
Otherwise I agree—if the goal we’re striving for is “get people advice”—then it makes sense that senior people are ranked higher than peers. I think it would be great to see how we could better leverage senior peoples’ time. (and thanks for sharing attendee feedback on what kinds of interactions they find valuable.)
I also agree about doing more with people “slightly ahead of you”—we didn’t discuss it much, but on reflection it definitely feels like fairly low hanging fruit.
Got it. Agree P2P makes sense if your goal is to build your social network / support group and that this is also valuable. I guess this doesn’t need to replace the goal of seeking advice, and can be pursued in parallel :)