I think your team correctly concluded that in-person events are enormously valuable for people making big career changes, but running in-person events are expensive and super logistically challenging. I think logistics are somewhat undervalued in the EA community, e.g. I read a lot of criticism along the lines of, “Why don’t community organizers or EAGs just do some extremely time costly thing,” without much appreciation for how hard it is to get things to happen.
From this perspective, lowering the barrier for in-person events by buying a conference venue seems like a reasonable investment. It’s fine to scrutinize the details (were there better deals given location/size constraints?), but I would like more critics of this purchase to acknowledge how buying a conference center has a lot of benefits.
Thanks for sharing this info, Claire!
I think your team correctly concluded that in-person events are enormously valuable for people making big career changes, but running in-person events are expensive and super logistically challenging. I think logistics are somewhat undervalued in the EA community, e.g. I read a lot of criticism along the lines of, “Why don’t community organizers or EAGs just do some extremely time costly thing,” without much appreciation for how hard it is to get things to happen.
From this perspective, lowering the barrier for in-person events by buying a conference venue seems like a reasonable investment. It’s fine to scrutinize the details (were there better deals given location/size constraints?), but I would like more critics of this purchase to acknowledge how buying a conference center has a lot of benefits.