I really like this post, and in general appreciate the ways you’ve been thinking about the EA community over the last few years, as someone who has been very close to community building, dissatisfied, and engaging to improve it, where I think most people just check out/give up.
One dynamic I see in this problem, that I don’t think you talked about, is that formal community building is focused on serving new EAs and growth partly because formal community doesn’t serve the most engaged members very well. This is because: 1. More engaged EAs in hubs often work in EA roles, and their cup is full, they don’t want more events. 2. Community builders are often not well placed to serve them, as they’ve been around longer than the community builders have. 3. People who have been in EA for a while often have their community experience be in their friendship groups, coworking spaces, or with colleagues, that I think does fill that role quite well. These places all have filters where they’re not open to everyone, which makes sense, but does create an awkward dynamic where the public EA community space ends up serving the newer EAs.
I do think more work could be done to move CEA’s strategy in the direction you point towards. But they do have to grapple with these dynamics, which I think are just pretty hard to change dramatically.
I really like this post, and in general appreciate the ways you’ve been thinking about the EA community over the last few years, as someone who has been very close to community building, dissatisfied, and engaging to improve it, where I think most people just check out/give up.
One dynamic I see in this problem, that I don’t think you talked about, is that formal community building is focused on serving new EAs and growth partly because formal community doesn’t serve the most engaged members very well. This is because:
1. More engaged EAs in hubs often work in EA roles, and their cup is full, they don’t want more events.
2. Community builders are often not well placed to serve them, as they’ve been around longer than the community builders have.
3. People who have been in EA for a while often have their community experience be in their friendship groups, coworking spaces, or with colleagues, that I think does fill that role quite well. These places all have filters where they’re not open to everyone, which makes sense, but does create an awkward dynamic where the public EA community space ends up serving the newer EAs.
I do think more work could be done to move CEA’s strategy in the direction you point towards. But they do have to grapple with these dynamics, which I think are just pretty hard to change dramatically.