Head of Events at the Centre for Effective Altruism
Amy Labenz
Thanks for the suggestion, Zach!
I did explain to Constance why she was initially rejected as one of the things we discussed on an hour-long call. We also discussed additional information she was considering including, and I told her I thought she was a better fit for EAGx (she said she was not interested). It can be challenging to give a lot of guidance on how to change a specific application, especially in cases where the goal is to “get in”. I worry about providing information that will allow candidates to game the system.
I don’t think this post reflects what I told Constance, perhaps because she disagrees with us. So, I want to stick to the policy for now.- 23 Sep 2022 21:23 UTC; 7 points) 's comment on Case Study of EA Global Rejection + Criticisms/Solutions by (
This comment (seen on Kerry Vaughan’s Twitter) hit me hard:
That comment hit me hard too.
In general, it hurts to make people feel bad and if I was optimizing the event for making myself/EAs feel good it would look different.
I had an hour long call with the person who made that post and was able to connect them with resources and explain the admissions process and considerations that go into it in a way that seemed to help. I think we could do a better job of explaining these things publicly and I think we should do that.
Working with you as ED for the past four years has been the happiest I’ve been at CEA. I’m really proud of the work we have done together and I’m so sorry for the personal toll it has taken on you. I hope you get some well-deserved rest and I look forward to working with you in your new advisory role. Thank you for everything, Max!
I’d like to clarify that “using the event app to request meetings for romantic or sexual reasons” is clearly listed as one of the behaviors that “don’t belong at EA Global or related events” in our Code of Conduct (also found on our FAQ and registration form). Agreeing to this is a condition of attending, we take violations seriously, and we are working with the community health team to investigate this incident.
- 12 Mar 2023 2:25 UTC; 28 points) 's comment on Share the burden by (
- 12 Mar 2023 3:22 UTC; 2 points) 's comment on Share the burden by (
Thanks for flagging this concern. I was worried someone might get the impression that this was related to animal welfare. While we don’t discuss the specifics of people’s applications publicly, that is definitely not the reason: we don’t penalize people for favoring animal welfare, global health, or existential risk reduction (or other prominent EA approaches).
Thanks for the comment! Toby is going to do a written AMA on the Forum later in the year too. This one is timed so that we can have video answers during Virtual EA Global.
A number of people have asked me whether I gave Constance permission to post a selection of my private Facebook communications and my email/the events team’s emails as part of this Forum post. I did not. I felt a bit uncomfortable with this, but I also did not ask her to take them down.
I saw that she had some suggestions for how I could improve my messages and my emails / other events team emails in the redline comments, and I agree some of her suggestions would have been improvements.
Thanks, Nathan! It was great to see you at EA Global.
You’re right that we didn’t share the specifics of our reasoning—I think that might have been the right call at the time given the tradeoffs of spending time on public communications vs. object-level preparation for the event, but I can understand how community members felt in the dark and we regret that.
To make explicit some of our reasoning: we think that the cost from COVID of the event was likely quite small relative to other costs of the conference. A back-of-the-envelope calculation from one of our COVID advisory board members suggests that the total counterfactually-adjusted COVID cost was ~1% of the other costs of the event (primarily attendee time, but also financial costs). We think that doubling the number of attendees may have grown the fraction of all costs attributed to COVID from 1% to something more like 2% — so while higher, it was still not one of the biggest costs of the event as a whole. So I want to acknowledge that, while we considered this aspect of the event and took precautions to limit the spread of COVID, we genuinely didn’t view COVID risk as a major cost to attendees: we probably spent more time worrying about whether the logistics would work. We stand behind this prioritization.
(The BOTEC was done after we had decided to expand the event, but when we consulted our advisory board, community leaders, and our own judgment of the benefits and risks before the expansion, it felt very clear that the benefits would exceed the costs by a large margin, to the extent that a detailed BOTEC didn’t seem like a good use of time. Our post-decision calculations seem to validate that view.)
Regarding staff capacity, we have been very stretched as a team this year. I fully came back from parental leave in mid-April. We ran EAG Reconnect in March, the EA Picnic in July, the EA Meta Coordination Forum in September, and EAG London in October. For much of that time, I was the only full-time staff member on the Events Team: we had one other part-time employee and two contractors. COVID-related precautions added (rough guess) 20-40% additional production time. We brought on two part-time contractors to help with admissions processing in the final weeks and brought on two additional contractors to assist with production for the week of the event (and, as usual, were helped by many wonderful volunteers during the event itself).
We knew we were stretched too thin and ran a hiring round, but the new hires had just started or not yet started at the time of EAG London (and running the round took capacity from the otherwise stretched team). I hope and expect this will pay off in 2022.
- 10 Nov 2021 18:06 UTC; 31 points) 's comment on Should EA Global London 2021 have been expanded? by (
Maybe it is important for folks to know that I have personally relaxed a lot about COVID risk. I think for most people in our target audience/demographic (young vaccinated people) the value of attending EAG is worth the risk. This is not because I think we create a space with near-zero risk of COVID exposure, but rather, as I say below, COVID is not the bulk of the risk/cost of this event.
I don’t make EAG decisions based on my own models alone, which is why I consult community leaders and the COVID Board, and why we encouraged attendees to do their own calculations and decide their own risk tolerances. I expect people shouldn’t come if they are particularly cautious and (as you stated) some didn’t. (As a parent of unvaccinated young children, I think about my risk tolerance differently than I expect a typical attendee does—I understand this is a personal thing that will vary by people’s circumstances.) I’m glad people could decide for themselves whether the value was worth the risk (many chose to attend, some didn’t). Perhaps I should have been more explicit about this.
Joey, thanks for your post! I work for CEA and am the Curator of EA Global. I manage content for the event so I’m responding to that part of the post.
When deciding which speakers to solicit, I try to consider things like cause area representation, presenter diversity, and the development of community norms, among other things. It is really hard to get this right, and I know that I’ve fallen short of where I’d like to be on all of these.
I do think we’ve managed to improve on the representativeness dimension over the past couple of years. I know there’s room for reasonable disagreement about how to categorize talks, and I think you and I must be looking at the talk categories differently because I’m coming up with a very different distribution than you mention. For talks at EA Global 2018, I count 21% animals, 18% meta/rationality, 25% AI/x-risk/GCRs, 14% global health and development, 7% government/policy and 14% other topics. Across the four events in 2017 and 2018, my breakdown shows 15% animals, 20% AI/x-risk/GCRs, 14% health and development, 11% government/policy, 23% meta/rationality, and 19% other. Here is a link to a categorization of all of the talks from 2017 and 2018 by cause area so that you can see how I’m thinking about the talk distribution (in the interest of time, and since you mentioned talks, I haven’t included meetups, office hours, workshops, or whiteboard sessions). I haven’t done the breakdown for 2015 and 2016, but I think we are representing the community’s interests better in recent years than we did in the past.
This year I’ve commissioned recommendations from EAs with subject matter expertise in the different cause areas to try to improve further. We also welcome speaker and content suggestions from the community. Please submit ideas for EA Global London here.
We haven’t tried a fully open event, but our 2016 was closer to open than our more recent events and came with various drawbacks.
Thanks, Max! I agree that’s confusing.
As Eli said, we are planning to revamp our website.
In the meantime, I’ve edited the homepage to be more accurate / to match the information on our FAQ page and admissions page to say:
”EA Global is designed for people who have a solid understanding of the main concepts of effective altruism, and who are making decisions and taking significant actions based on them.
EA Global conferences are not the only events for people interested in effective altruism! EAGx conferences are locally-organized conferences designed primarily for people:Familiar with the core ideas of effective altruism
Interested in learning more about what to do
From the region or country where the conference is taking place (or living there)
See our FAQ page for more information.”
The edits should show up shortly if they haven’t already.
Hey Emma,
Thanks so much for your bravery in sharing your story. I’m so sorry to hear about your experiences at EAG and the afterparty. I care about and value you a lot as a community member and a colleague and it makes me very sad to hear that you were uncomfortable.
As I mentioned in my other reply, we are working with the community health team to investigate the EAG incident, and I plan to do what I can to help.
Hi James,
Thanks very much for sharing this feedback.We mentioned in the protocol that “We considered the venue rules, UK and London requirements, and World Health Organization’s guidelines when drafting this protocol. We also used these resources to draft questions for our COVID Advisory Board.”
Some of the complication comes from cases where the rules from these different bodies are different from what our COVID Advisory Board recommended. The various rules and recommendations shaped the policies, but we didn’t explain our reasoning for some of the decisions and I think some of our language was confusing—sorry about that.
I’ve responded to each of your main points below.
Are negative tests sufficient?We have updated the protocol to clarify that attendees must be fully vaccinated. To enter the conference venue, they must provide proof of full vaccination. In some cases, the venue might consider the vaccine card inadequate (for example, if the card is from another country without a certified translation). In this case, attendees will also need proof of an officially-logged negative lateral flow test.
Will contractors be vaccinated?
We’ve requested that all contractors and onsite employees are fully vaccinated. However, the venue expressed concern that they might be prohibited from agreeing due to UK employment discrimination laws, and we haven’t been able to secure agreement yet. We have escalated our request to the venue’s CEO and we’re waiting to hear back. If they don’t agree to fully vaccinated staff, they will require negative lateral flow tests as a minimum.
Can children attend?
We are continuing to monitor the situation and don’t plan to commit to a policy on children until closer to the event. Any parents who might wish to bring their children to EA Global can inform us when purchasing their ticket, and this information will help us to make a final decision.
Why are masks not compulsory?
We may revisit this policy but we’re not currently planning to require masks. We will encourage the wearing of masks and have them widely available onsite but we don’t plan to police their use (and thus don’t want attendees to attend with the expectation of strict mask protocols). The latest Government guidance asks the public to use their own judgement in deciding where they should wear one.
Missing safety measures
The venue does provide surface cleaning and hand sanitizer stations, and we considered including that information in the protocol, but we worried that listing excessive detail would contribute to “safety theater” so we cut it from the final copy. We decided to focus on highlighting the policies that we think are most likely to contribute to safety, rather than giving attendees a false sense of security by highlighting precautionary measures that we think don’t add much. You can find more details on the venue safety protocols here.
We failed to mention that the ventilation system at the venue brings in fresh air from outside (rather than recycled air) and has filters that are changed weekly. Windows will be opened to provide additional ventilation where possible (depending on the weather). In addition, the venue capacity is 1,200 in some configurations. We are only having 500 attendees, which is a 23% reduction compared to EA Global: London 2019. I’ve added this information to the protocol.
Hi Constance,
Quick point of clarification: I don’t know what the anecdotes are referring to, but for what it’s worth, we have 3.5 CEA FTEs working on EAG along with venue/production staff and volunteers. We do not have the ability to monitor all attendee interactions, nor do we want to.
We do have a community health point of contact onsite at all of our events. This person is available in case anyone experiences harassment, bullying, has a mental health concern, or needs other assistance.
Hello! The aim of this event is to be open to students who are familiar with the basic ideas of EA, and to non-students who are also familiar with the basic ideas of EA and want to mentor students.
We accepted around 95% of student applicants to this event. In most cases where we did not accept a student’s application, the reason was that they provided so little information that we could not tell if they were familiar with EA. In some cases where we rejected applications from non-students, it was because they indicated they were primarily interested in networking, etc rather than mentoring students which is the focus of this event.
In the case of students who indicated very little knowledge about EA, we sent them a message saying they weren’t currently accepted and offering them suggested readings on EA if they wanted to learn more and then re-apply. We offered this until shortly before the application deadline.
We heard from a few people who didn’t notice their acceptance email because of the folder it went to in their inbox — we recommend checking all the folders if you’re expecting a response from us and haven’t heard back!
I’m very excited to welcome you to the team, Zach! I like your vision for CEA, think you did a good job managing a very challenging situation with EV, and I’m personally very enthusiastic about the opportunity to work together!
I’m really sorry to hear this. It is concerning to hear that being rejected from EAG made you feel like you were “turned away from even hanging out with people.” This is not our intention, and I’d be happy to chat with you about other resources and opportunities for in-person meetings with other EAs.
We also get things wrong sometimes so I’m sad to hear you feel like our decision impacted your trajectory away from a highly devoted version of your life. The EAG admissions process is not intended to evaluate you as a person, it is for determining whether you would be a fit for a particular event. It seems possible that you applied at a time when we were experimenting with a policy that prioritized people who were not yet highly engaged but were in a position to become highly engaged (I’m guessing this because you say your “newbie” partner got in). Our admissions process has changed over time and currently we consider things like engagement with EA, epistemics, and ability to gain things from the event or provide mentorship to others (for example, if people are currently making a decision and have a plan to use conversations at the conference to influence them).
As an example of the imperfection of the process, EA Global once rejected an application from someone who then went on to work at Open Philanthropy less than 2 years later. One change we have made since 2020 is to not outright reject sparse applications, but rather send a message saying that we did not have adequate information to approve an application, and suggest the applicant update their application if there is anything more they think we should know.
Thanks for your comment and I’m sorry to hear how our admissions process impacted you.
Thanks for sharing your concerns. I’ll reply more later (baby is still sleeping on me!) but I wanted to quickly clarify that everyone must be fully vaccinated. The venue may not accept some vaccine cards so the testing backup option is for those limited cases. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
Hi Constance,
I was sad to read your initial post and recognize how disappointed you are about not getting to come to this EAG. And I see you’ve put a lot of work into this post and your application. I’m sorry that the result wasn’t what you were hoping for.
After our call (I’m happy to disclose that I am “X”), I was under the impression that you understood our decision, and I was happy to hear that you started getting involved with the in-person community after we spoke.
As I mentioned to you, I recommend that you apply to an EAGx event, which might be a better fit for you at this stage.
It’s our policy to not discuss the specifics of people’s applications with other people besides them. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to give more detail about why you were rejected publicly, so it is hard to really reply to the substance of this post, and share the other side of this story.
I hope that you continue to find ways to get involved, deepen your EA thinking, and make contributions to EA cause areas. I’m sorry that this has been a disappointing experience for you. At this point, given our limited capacity, and the time we’ve spent engaging on calls, email, and Facebook, I’m going to focus on building up our team in order to run more EAG and EAGx events.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the process more generally. My team is focused on EAG right now, but we plan to reflect on any structural changes after the event.