If we started receiving lots of “this conference felt too big” feedback, then yes we would possibly action on that, but that hasn’t really happened yet
This directly contradicts this December 2019 EA Forum post about EAG admissions, which has the following as a reply to “Why not make [EAG] larger?” (emphasis mine):
The largest EA Global was about 1000 people in 2016, and we got feedback that it was too big and that it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. Our recent events have been between 500 − 650 people including speakers, volunteers, and staff.
Venues above that size tend to be significantly more expensive, or less suited to the event. We already subsidize tickets and provide financial aid to keep prices reasonable, so more attendees cost CEA more. (We know there are a variety of opinions about the tradeoffs between cost and the quality of the venue/logistics/catering, and we’ll continue to look at those tradeoffs carefully.)
We’ll continue exploring the question of how big the event should be, including ways to help people connect better even within a large event.
From my understanding, this new description seems fairly misleading, given the following EA Forum comments:
From Zach Stein-Perlman:
From Kevin Kuruc:
From Lauren Maria: