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So, groups need consistency over time to be successes, and I’m wary of these posts about airdropping people to kickstart then declaring victory. My wariness is probably because it appeared to work in my city for one semester, only for everything to be gone the subsequent semester.
I think declarations of victory are plausibly good on a cultural level, in spite of the fact that many people have to continue fighting onward, so I don’t want to be a party pooper. But, I think we should at least have social rewards for, or better yet just have norms that expect, people to say “this project had core goals xyz which we’re p% sure will have abc impact per year over the next 5 years, we also associate it with externalities or secondary goals pqr which we’re also excited about”. In the case of this post, I would have liked to see predictions for 2024 engagement at each of the groups that got kickstarted (or let others register predictions, then insider trade and take their money).
Hey Quinn!
That’s a really interesting idea—I’ve made a prediction question about this here: https://manifold.markets/Amarins/will-at-least-7-of-the-new-effectiv. We think there’s a 75% chance that at least 7 of these groups will still be active in 2024 (the definition of active is in the question). Based on the results of PISE, I roughly think that each group could lead to 3-10 new HEAs for each year that they manage to operate.
Could you elaborate a bit on what happened to the group after that residency? Sounds very relevant but I can’t seem to find a post-mortem.
I agree that we should be careful here. I think that the fact that the groups will participate in UGAP this semester (as well as the other great resources that have become available) significantly increases their chances of surviving the critical first year tho, and we will continue to support them as well. It might be good to mention that I also don’t see this post as a declaration of victory (despite the clickbait title) but as a a ‘how & why to try this out’ post (which was the original title).
I’m not the guy to write a postmortem, as I wasn’t involved, but the sense I get from talking to grad students is that 1. omicron suspended weekly dinners, 2. organizers got busy with other projects. This is not the canonical postmortem or explanation, but I believe is factually accurate and may provide more than zero information.
Thank you!
Great, congratulations on the high agency and the great success so far!
I like this a lot and I know from experience that other national groups are dealing with similar questions of balancing precaution/quality over proactiveness/quantity when discussing meta community building strategies! (and currently balancing more on the precautionary side, e.g. High Impact Medicine Germany, EA Germany)
What do you think were the greatest risks of this fast approach and what did you do to proactively mitigate them?
Hey Tim :)
Yeah good question! I don’t really see that many risks with a proactive approach, because right now, anyone can decide to start a group, and with this approach there is at least some form of quality control (first from EA Netherlands and then from UGAP). The biggest risk I currently see is value drift if the groups bring on too many new members/co-organizers too quickly, as well as the risk of the groups becoming too homogeneous because they used a somewhat similar approach to get started (intro events → 4-week fellowship).
What are your thoughts?
Very excited to see how this major nation-wide community building push will turn out! As someone that has gotten involved with setting up several of these new local groups, it has been really motivating and encouraging to have this support network of other organizers starting groups around the same time. If you run into a problem, there’s a good chance others are struggling with the same issues and you can collaborate on solutions! In my experience this lowers the barrier for getting involved as an organizer quite considerably, and I’m predicting it will make it easier to find future organizers as well.