Charlotte Darnell
https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/community-health/team
Charlotte Darnell
Karma: 270
Thank you for the thoughts. My team was pretty uncertain about whether to post this, and I could have done some things better. It seems helpful to clarify some of my intentions behind the original post:
Various people had mentioned that they were concerned about this in casual conversation. It felt useful to link to a specific reference point for the already- existing discussion rather than have rumours escalate or warp.
Given Peter Singer is someone with a significant influence in EA, and with the context of recent events in our community, I expected many people in EA would want to be aware if concerns had been raised about him, provided they were appropriately hedged.
Given those conversations and considerations happening in private, making it public was the action that felt the most integrity-driven to me at the time.
I could have done better at framing the post. I do think it can be valuable from a community health perspective to link post to things of interest before we have all the facts in, but there’s a balance to get right here.
Thanks for your detailed comment! I work on the events team so I can add some info.
Yep, we broadly agree here. We’re keen to open and review applications earlier than we have been doing, for many of the reasons you mention. It’s something we’ve been actively working on for a while, but unfortunately we have been dealing with a variety of bottlenecks on this front. We have designed a new application system for EAG 2023, which will open very soon. It’s an application for all of the EAGs in 2023, rather than on a conference by conference basis. So, once people are accepted, they can then register (and plan/book travel for) any of the announced EAGs in 2023.EAGx admissions are done by their respective organising teams, as they are community hosted. CEA just supports them, so we can’t directly control their admissions turnaround, but we are making systems improvements that the EAGx teams can benefit from too. This will hopefully help somewhat!
Thanks for taking the time to write this and be vulnerable despite your concerns (and the RSI!).
I definitely resonate with some of what you’ve written, and share some of your frustrations. I might expand my thoughts here or via DM in future if you’d be interested, but in the meantime, I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry it’s been a tough time.
I am glad to hear that you’ve had some good experiences along with the difficult ones (though this mixture of appreciation for and frustration with the EA community can be quite the emotional rollercoaster). I’m also glad you’re doing what feels right for you.
Thank you for all the work and effort you’ve put in. I (and I know others too) have really enjoyed learning about your projects and I’m excited to see what you work on going forward, even if it’s from a bit more of a distance. It’s been lovely getting to know you a little and my metaphorical door is open if you’d like to chat sometime in future.
[If there are concerns you’d like to talk to the Community Health Team about, you can contact us here.]
I enjoyed reading this and think past me would have found this quite helpful to read before attending a conference for the first time, so thank you!
Hi, I believe the Rotterdam team are processing the videos and getting permission from speakers at the moment. They should be up soon!
I enjoyed reading this, thanks!
This was great to hear about, thanks for writing it! The ‘likelihood to recommend’ scores are exciting, congratulations :))
So excited about these, and glad to see them shared. Thanks for all of your hard work Mila + team!
This really resonated with me—thanks for writing!
Thanks for writing this Alix. Something I hadn’t been tracking much before this post was how events like EAGs and retreats might be especially tiring if you’re doing lots of 1:1s in a different language. I remember being surprised by just how tired I got spending all day in a different language when I worked in France, and can’t imagine how much that’s multiplied when discussing complicated EA topics and ideas.
Ah I really like the idea of adding languages to swapcard profiles—I’ll share this with the events team!
Thanks for your suggestion here — we currently have a ‘least valuable experience’ question in our post-event feedback form, but your suggestion is an interesting idea. We’re now discussing it internally. (For context, I work on the events team at CEA and have been the community health contact person at previous EAG/EAGx events.)
I think figuring out whether something is a serious enough issue to talk to the community health team about can feel hard for several reasons like those you’ve mentioned. In general, the more serious something is the more likely it is you should tell the community contact. Additionally, the more upset you are about the incident (even if it might not be perceived as serious by others) the more likely it is you should tell the community contact, especially if being upset is making it hard for you to participate in the event.
As you and other commenters have implied, we generally like to hear about incidents even if they seem minor, in order to keep an eye on patterns of behaviour. Sending a short text/whatsapp to the community contact number might be a low-cost way to let us know about things that feel minor. There are a variety of possible actions we may take depending on the severity of the incident(s) and other context. We’ve sometimes just made a note of the incident, and don’t act unless other complaints about the same person come up. We’ve had conversations like you’ve suggested, gently letting people know they’ve made an attendee uncomfortable. On the other end of the spectrum we’ve permanently banned people from our events for more serious incidents or repeated patterns of unacceptable behaviour. And there are various intermediary actions we’ve taken too.