Nice ideas here Sebastian. I wanted to clarify what you mean by professional core groups, the example you gave of EA London’s finance community sounds like a professional group within a local group. In my view the current challenge is that many cities don’t even have community groups at all much less the ability to subdivide based on profession.
I think it makes sense for EA to build community both along the lines of geography but also in professions (without respect to geography) e.g. EA’s in Healthcare. Of these two I think the priority should be the former because it gives people a far stronger sense of engagement and community.
You correctly identified the difficulty in building sustainable local groups is that no one is responsible for maintaining them. EA should move towards setting up professional community builders in key cities to keep EA’s spiritually tied to the movement even if they aren’t working in the top orgs. I imagine a lot of people are hesitant at this idea because they view it as wasted resources but I suspect that’s wrong and that these groups will become net financial contributors to the movement.
Hey, I’m thinking of professional ‘groups’ or strong networks without respect to geography, though I would guess that some professions will cluster around certain geographies. E.g. in finance you’d expect EAs to be mainly in London, Frankfurt, New York etc. And it would be preferable for members to be in as few locations as possible.
I agree that local groups are very important, and plausibly more important, than professional groups. However, local groups work largely by getting members more involved in the community and providing ‘push’ factors to go into EA careers. I think the next frontier of community building will be to add these ‘pull’ factors. We have made a lot of progress on the local groups side, now it is time to think about the next challenge.
Re professional community builders: this is already happening & good. But they are largely working on getting members more engaged, rather than building strong professional ‘core’ communities (though some people do work in this direction, it is not a main focus).
I suspect the driving force will be volunteers at the start, similar to how student groups got started initially. These would be people that are already well-connected and have some experience in their field. This would also get around the issue that EA orgs may currently not have resources for such projects. I doubt funding will be an issue hif the volunteers meet these properties.
Nice ideas here Sebastian. I wanted to clarify what you mean by professional core groups, the example you gave of EA London’s finance community sounds like a professional group within a local group. In my view the current challenge is that many cities don’t even have community groups at all much less the ability to subdivide based on profession.
I think it makes sense for EA to build community both along the lines of geography but also in professions (without respect to geography) e.g. EA’s in Healthcare. Of these two I think the priority should be the former because it gives people a far stronger sense of engagement and community.
You correctly identified the difficulty in building sustainable local groups is that no one is responsible for maintaining them. EA should move towards setting up professional community builders in key cities to keep EA’s spiritually tied to the movement even if they aren’t working in the top orgs. I imagine a lot of people are hesitant at this idea because they view it as wasted resources but I suspect that’s wrong and that these groups will become net financial contributors to the movement.
Hey, I’m thinking of professional ‘groups’ or strong networks without respect to geography, though I would guess that some professions will cluster around certain geographies. E.g. in finance you’d expect EAs to be mainly in London, Frankfurt, New York etc. And it would be preferable for members to be in as few locations as possible.
I agree that local groups are very important, and plausibly more important, than professional groups. However, local groups work largely by getting members more involved in the community and providing ‘push’ factors to go into EA careers. I think the next frontier of community building will be to add these ‘pull’ factors. We have made a lot of progress on the local groups side, now it is time to think about the next challenge.
Re professional community builders: this is already happening & good. But they are largely working on getting members more engaged, rather than building strong professional ‘core’ communities (though some people do work in this direction, it is not a main focus).
I suspect the driving force will be volunteers at the start, similar to how student groups got started initially. These would be people that are already well-connected and have some experience in their field. This would also get around the issue that EA orgs may currently not have resources for such projects. I doubt funding will be an issue hif the volunteers meet these properties.