Thanks Ben! Agreed that readings / connections are some of the most important things needed to capture the most talented and proactive people. That said, it seems like even the most “self-motivated” people get distracted in the college environment, where there are so many competing things to learn and student groups to be part of. As a result, I think slightly more structure is needed to get these people:
For #2, instead of just getting folks subscribed to a newsletter, I like the idea of informal group chats and Discords that hold self-motivated people in asynchronous discussion spaces as they explore on their own.
For #4, I think these could be bucketed into “opportunities” and expanded a lot more (1-on-1s with EA leaders/professionals, invitations to retreats/EAG, invite-only socials, internship/fellowship opportunities, etc).
Would love to see what a top of funnel program actually designed for the most talented and proactive students looks like though.
I’ve spent a couple hours reflecting on this and think the Penn residency was quite successful. As an organizer, I am incredibly grateful to have been able to shadow Sydney and Thomas for a couple weeks and help out / learn how to do things like 1-on-1s, run weekly dinners, set up club logistics, etc, (I was probably spending 20+ hours/week supporting the residency).
That said, I’m wary of people updating too much in favor of residencies based on this post.
Stanford EA ran a couple of residencies at other top universities on the East Coast during this time frame. Most of these other experiments didn’t seem to produce as great of results. Perhaps this was because other schools received a lot less organizer time (for example, Princeton received one FTE organizer for a couple of days, whereas Penn had two FTE organizers for three weeks). However, I also think an important consideration is that Sydney knew me (Ashley Lin) prior to coming to Penn. As Thomas mentioned, I am on a gap year and had ~20 hours/week to jump in and help out however necessary.
The residency seems a lot harder if you don’t already know a potential organizer at the school and if that person doesn’t have much time (is too busy at the start of the school year). To me, the process for making a uni group self-sustaining looks something like:
Identify potential organizers, probably through 1-on-1s if you don’t know people already
Screen them for alignment and general competence, probably through working with them for a couple weeks during the residency period
Get a commitment from that person to take responsibility for making sure the group doesn’t die, before handing over the reins
It seems like if you didn’t already know someone, Phase 1 would take up a significant amount of energy (and you might not even find a suitable candidate). This might not leave enough time for Phase 2 to happen during the residency period, making Phase 3 an automatic failure point. My crux for whether a residency should happen: one should already have identified a promising organizer who would want to shadow the experienced organizers during the residency period.
Instead of seeing the value of residencies as something that speeds up a group by ~4 months, I think one should see it as a training phase for promising organizers. I’d even be excited by experiments where experienced group organizers choose a school to do a residency at, and we brought promising organizers from other schools to observe and help out. As someone who did this “training phase” and now feels comfortable helping start EA groups at any uni, I think mentorship during residencies could be one of the most effective ways to help students upskill in group organizing / meta-EA work.