I foster collaboration between funders and researchers in order to identify and implement the most cost-effective ways to improve mental health and wellbeing.
From 2021-2023 I was Communications Manager at the Happier Lives Institute. From 2018-2021 I worked on CEA’s events team, helping to produce EA Global and EAGx conferences.
I practice Vipassana meditation for two hours on most days and Buddhist philosophy drives my commitment to reducing the suffering of others.
There’s also a real-time chat on the YouTube page
Thanks for the suggestion! Because of the time zone differences, we’ve squeezed as much content as possible into a 4 hour window. However, if you’re watching live on YouTube you can pause the broadcast at any time, and then catch up again by watching at 1.5x speed.
We’ll be sending out a feedback survey after the Sunday broadcast, and we’d be really grateful to hear about people’s experiences and suggestions.
I’ll post the survey link here when it’s live.
We hope you’ve enjoyed participating in the first-ever EA Global virtual conference. We’d really value your feedback to help us plan more virtual events for the EA community over the coming months.
If you’re short on time, you can complete this survey in about 5 minutes, but the more detail you can provide in the open text questions, the better.
Take the survey now at https://efctv.org/virtual
We’re excited to announce that meeting slots have been extended all the way through to next Sunday, March 29 so please continue to make new connections and schedule one-on-one meetings.
Thanks Edo! We use a number of metrics to track the success of our events. I’ve pulled together a few charts for you that show success on four measures:
Likelihood to recommend
Valuable experiences
New connections
Maintained motivation
You’ll see that our likelihood to recommend score was much lower than usual for the EA Global: Virtual in March, but we learned lessons from that event which contributed to the EAGxVirtual score being comparable with previous in-person events.
In terms of valuable experiences, EAGxVirtual was much more successful at changing the minds of attendees, particularly first-time attendees. However, the number of people making important connections was lower than EA Global: London 2019.
The main difference we’ve noticed between virtual and in-person events is the number of new connections made (see slides 4 and 5). This feels significant because attendees consistently report one-on-one meetings and new connections as their most valuable experience at our events. In-person events seem to be much more effective at generating new connections but there isn’t much of a difference in terms of generating at least one important connection. Perhaps we could make some tweaks to the virtual format to increase the number of new connections at future events.
You’ll also see that our virtual events have been very successful at maintaining the motivation of attendees, more so than EA Global: San Francisco 2019. In particular, we received lots of positive feedback about the virtual format from community members who wouldn’t normally be able to attend an in-person EA conference.
> Also, I’m curious, what CRM are you using and for what purpose?
We are using Zoho CRM. The major use case for it right now is processing event applications: it’s integrated with our application forms, ticketing systems, bulk mailing software etc. to provide a unified overview of everyone who has applied for an event. (This is briefly mentioned above in the “Systems Improvements” section of this post.) We also use it to identify attendees who are good fits for specific parts of the event, for example creating a list of first-time attendees who might benefit from our “Guides” program. Other CEA projects sporadically use the CRM to identify specific people who match some criteria (e.g. if we are trying to brainstorm potential group organizers in some location) but this is not the main use case.
Good point. I worded that clumsily. I’ve edited the post so it incorporates the full quote now.
I recommend this paper by the Happiness Research Institute (a Copenhagen-based think tank, not to be confused with the Happier Lives Institute):
#SortingOutSocialMedia: Does social media really pose a threat to young people’s well-being?
They found that young people’s online and offline lives are inextricably linked, and that it is necessary to consider which platforms young people use, how they use them, and which personal characteristics make some young people more vulnerable than others online.
I don’t have a specific person in mind I’m afraid but you could post in the Effective Altruism, Mental Health, and Happiness Facebook group and see if anyone there would like to get involved.
Thank you for all the work that you and the team are doing on this Sanjay.
Will you be encouraging people to attend MP advice surgeries as part of your strategy? I used to be a senior caseworker in an MP’s constituency office. In my experience, a 1-1 conversation with a well-informed constituent was more likely to influence the MP’s voting intention than sending an email.
Hi Maria! Ideally, we are looking for teams of 3-4 core organisers for each location but you can also express interest as an individual. I’ll then look for opportunities to connect you with other potential organisers depending on the other applications received.
Thanks for letting us know Josh. Your application has been received. We’re investigating the issue further but it seems it’s not affecting all users.
Thanks for the feedback Jack. You should go through to a confirmation page on submission but it appears that’s not been happening for some people. We’re looking into why that’s happening.
In the meantime, I’ve added some additional text above the submit button that tells people to check their inbox to confirm submission if they’re in any doubt.
There are a number of reasons that people drift away from the community. Ben West has a sequence of posts about this here.
I don’t know what led your friends to drift away, but it’s often the case that people are still interested in EA ideas but other events in their life take higher priority for a while. If that applies to your friends, then we think the main benefits of attending this event are:
Give and receive feedback on career, study, or donation plans
Make new connections and reconnect with old contacts
Discover and discuss interesting ideas
We’ll also have a session at the event exploring the different retention factors that Ben identifies in his posts (e.g. balancing parenting with EA, or finding a way to contribute if you don’t have experience that’s relevant to the field you want to work in). Hearing different people in the community sharing their experiences about this may also be helpful to your friends.
Thanks very much for posting this summary David. I’ve found it very helpful for thinking about ways to improve EA Global in 2019. I read the whole book over the Christmas holidays and compiled my own set of notes which readers may find complementary to your excellent summary:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZFX7g4RrbhUJTrfA4mABn7imcnkc7MqJmYOwdh7Gu7g/edit#gid=245929848