Agreed.
One data point: in the recent EA community retreat I organized for 65 people in France in 2025 (not a âpremiumâ retreat), the cost per participant was 156âŹ. This includes my time as well as financial support from participants.
I tend to see these types of events as complementary. I think we should not treat their various outcomes as fungible. You get results of different, non-tradeable kinds. In particular:
Differents types of participants
Different types of impact.
I love number 4! :D
Yes. Another question is the geographical direction of the (potential) giving. I suppose we should expect a strong focus on US-centric actions, which might very suboptimal. Surely relying on funds will help coordinate intelligently.
Therefore, one approach to preparing for the influx of many new donors could be to increase the EA Funds teams to facilitate grantmaking (afaik, theyâre quite overworked anyway).
Thanks for the kind words!
To answer your question:
- One person said it to me, and another wrote it in the feedback form: it can be hard to understand how an organization can amend their activities to be more effective, concretely. Another person found the event âtoo theoricalâ.
- I personally think examples contribute a lot to making the ideas clearer and more convincing.
Iâm really thrilled that you seized this opportunity to speak to many people (and become one of the relatively rare speakers to discuss a moral atrocity on that stage).
With the Dwarkesh Patel podcast episode you recently did, this is very, very encouraging. Thank you so much.
Thanks a lot for maintaining this space! Itâs been great coworking with you and others in GatherTown, I love how it creates a cozy, friendly atmosphere akin to that of a physical office.
Strong reco for others to come (especially remote workers) and experiment with this solution.
Thank you for the write-up. Itâs been quite impressive and very positive to see the development of Mieux Donner, kudos to the cofounders, the early hires, as well as Ambitious Impact who gave the push to most of the recently-launched effective giving initiatives!!
Great! Iâm very interested in how this compares with the most beloved EA format: the âfellowshipâ. If this works well, it will present a number of advantages: more dense; less need for planning; basically no dropping out.
Funny to notice that with my usual âfunnel-basedâ thinking Iâd have listed these workshops in the reverse order.
Hey @JoAđ¸ , I was considering having a translation (maybe adapted to our cultural context) on EA Franceâs website, if @Jeff Kaufman đ¸ is giving us his blessing :)
Hi, thanks for the post!
After discussing with other group organizers, 2 interesting ideas came up and I wanted to share them for CEAâs considerationâI hope Iâm not repeating something written elsewhere:
Referral codes that group organizers might give some specific members to signal that theyâre recommending these applicants.
Some kind of referral-rewarding program that encourages people to invite new people to apply to EAG(x) events.
(both options might involve something called âreferral codesâ but they are very distinct things).
This sounds like a nice, helpful tool that I intuitively think will be valuable to ensure people think clearly about how to make efforts in a concrete directions. I really like the 3 âpathsâ for this.
I donât understand this, though: how do you suggest tracking peopleâs answers to this tool? How is the data consolidated?
Really nice to make this a part of the EAG family framework!
Regarding the naming: I guess it depends on the location, but for instance in France, a lot of people weâd like to participate still have not heard about EA. In such contexts, I think itâs probably a better idea to avoid calling the event âEA <something>â and to choose something like âImpact <summit? day? expo? ignition?>â, so that even people not familiar with the movement can have an idea about the theme as soon as they hear the title.
Interesting topic ideas, thanks in advance GergĹ!
Quick question: why not write on the EA Forum? I am not convinced by âthe most valuable conversations on field building are happening when people share their hot takes at conferences, retreats, or between staff members of fieldbuilding orgs that are just a bit too edgy to write up for the EA forumâ. Is it just a better âwriter experienceâ?
To be clear, I am interested enough in your views that I went to Substack and subscribed to your newsletter! It seems to me that for your topics, there are much stronger reasons to stay on the forum than for leaving it: I suppose youâll get more readers; it will be more convenient for said readers; thereâs a good comments system; the audio transcription; there are previous of within-forum links; and probably other important things Iâm forgetting.
If you want people to take your writings less seriously, and to be able to write without spending hours reviewing your texts, maybe you could use the âquick takesâ?
(super interested to hear what was in favor of Substack! :) )
The context might vary and make me reconsider in certain instances, but I generally think itâs important to say that there are ways to act that are orders of magnitude more effective than others. So yes, insist on âmoreâ rather than on âthe most possibleâ⌠But with an emphasis on the fact that there are resources to help you and guide you towards options that are likely to be immensely more impactful than most actions.
I think itâs very valuable to post this like you did, for you probably but also for others (like me) to see what kind of methodological traps and limitations arise in this kind of effort. Thanks!
You mentioned this âbig questionâ: How effective is the GHSI at actually driving change in the biosecurity field?
The GHSI is a really nice tool created by big orgs, so I think itâs necessary and useful to break this down into subquestions like you did. IMO itâs also good, while researcher these questions (who engages with the index, and how? Is this legible and actionable?) further, to take a step back to consider the limits of the whole approach, like the fact that analyzing at national-level raises some issues, given how international dynamics emerge during such times of crisis (Moeen mentioned this in the GDocâs comments).
Your comments here and there make sense to me. I feel like itâs quite straightforward in theory, and harder to do in practice.
I do observe that some orgs are leagues above others in communicating, and I feel like the two important reasons for this are
- the orgâs willingness to allocate resources to professional communication work
- the extent to which the orgâs activity lends itself to communication (eg most orgs working with cute animals have an advantage here).
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this, @Melanie Brennan đš and @Anthony L ! It must have been difficult at this time of turmoil.
First, congratulations on all you (and past CBers) have accomplished in Barcelona and in Spain more generally. Your recap in this post clearly shows that much was done, and I think your sustained work has probably created a lot of positive impact.
Second, I think this post is important for reminding all of us that EA community building is at a strange place: it is clearly important, but it is also very hard to get funding for. Like many other roles in EA, we (counting myself) are precarious workers, relying on yearly renewals and decent-if-you-can-live-frugally salaries. Off the top of my head, Iâd say with confidence that fewer than 50 people in the world do principles-first EA community building as their main source of income. And I think perhaps fewer than 30 have been at it for more than 2 years.
Good luck to both of you, and looking forward to see the switch to a community/âvolunteering-led system works out!