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Thank you! This is really useful and actionable advice.

Hypothetical Example
Let’s say you are at EAG to build EA Supply Chain and Logistics and you run into a software engineer who is eager to skill up . You could:

• ignore them unless they work at Amazon, FedEx, Maersk, etc

• try to convince them the best way to improve their skills is to help your group

• ask them if they’ve read the recent EA Forum post: I’m Offering Free Coaching for Software Developers in the EA community

• introduce them to other software developers/​engineers at EAG and in your professional network

• encourage them to talk to someone at EA Virtual Programs about if being a facilitator is helpful for learning soft skills

• mention the High Impact Professionals session you attended and its relevance to them

In that 5-minute conversation, by listening to their needs and interests, you can deliver immediate actionable advice that could have a high long-term impact. Or you could focus on yourself: is self-focus more effective? More altruistic?

Another fantastic post, Kuhan! I like this agentic vision of networking, where the goal is “improve EA networks by building useful connections between people, groups, and projects” rather than “improve my own network by connecting to EAs”. It’s a more exciting (and ambitious!) goal to have :)

One tiny way to implement this is by asking, towards the end of an EA networking conversation

Is there anything else you can think of that I might do for you?

In my experience, if you or your interlocutor come up with a real request here, you get a nice burst of camaraderie, an emergent sense that you’re on the same team.

This is helpful for every walk of life, so it should be no surprise to me that it’s also part of being an effective altruist. And yet, it’s not something I thought a lot about before I read this post. As an organizer for EAGxToronto (taking place in August) I’m wondering if you think a networking workshop based on these principles (and others) would be useful? It will be my FIRST EAG/​x conference, so I’m interested to know what you think.

Thanks so much for this Kuhan!
I notice that I tend to become much more self-centered around conferences and hyper-networking social interactions. This is a great +1 for calibrating one’s priorities more towards focusing on being of service rather than being served.