One data point suggesting the positive impact of setting up facebook groups for places that have no groups:
Back in 2014 or 2015 LEAN set up an “EA Christchurch” facebook group, that I was able to stumble upon. By posting on this group I found another couple of interested people in my city, and we’ve had a small but thriving EA group since. I might not have had the gumption to start a local group (or may have taken a lot longer to start) without that facebook group connecting us.
Of course that doesn’t mean this strategy will work in other situations, or whether the strategy could just have easily been net negative, but I believe it was very positive in our situation.
Note at first I was very suspicious that the admins, and most of the members, were not from Christchurch, so if you haven’t already you might want to explain who you are and what you are hoping to do for the group on the group page.
This makes we think of a useful perspective on this post: we still have a long way to go to spread EA within the cultures/regions where it has already taken root such that there is still a lot to be gained from doing that without dealing with the added complications of taking EA to new cultures.
One data point suggesting the positive impact of setting up facebook groups for places that have no groups:
Back in 2014 or 2015 LEAN set up an “EA Christchurch” facebook group, that I was able to stumble upon. By posting on this group I found another couple of interested people in my city, and we’ve had a small but thriving EA group since. I might not have had the gumption to start a local group (or may have taken a lot longer to start) without that facebook group connecting us.
Of course that doesn’t mean this strategy will work in other situations, or whether the strategy could just have easily been net negative, but I believe it was very positive in our situation.
Note at first I was very suspicious that the admins, and most of the members, were not from Christchurch, so if you haven’t already you might want to explain who you are and what you are hoping to do for the group on the group page.
This makes we think of a useful perspective on this post: we still have a long way to go to spread EA within the cultures/regions where it has already taken root such that there is still a lot to be gained from doing that without dealing with the added complications of taking EA to new cultures.