I start projects that I find exciting and fun. I now run the Prague Fall Season, Fixed Point and Epistea.
Previously, I co-led the Prague 2022 CFAR Workshops series, led the Czech EA Association, and organized EAGxPrague 2022.
IrenaK
Karma: 723
That seems fair, but I don’t have any other concrete information, so for now, that’s my position based on the information I have. It may change on whatever else becomes available but I am skeptical of the value of any additional material that Nonlinear present because it seems that they covered all their main concerns already during their call with Ben and because this attempt to “provide evidence” backfired and in my opinion gives more credibility to Alice, not less. If this is an example of a “100% provable false claim” and a reason to call Alice a “bald-faced liar”, then the letter was absolutely disproportionate.
Since this is now a standalone post, I’m reposting my comment from the subthread of Ben’s post:
I think it’s telling, that Kat thinks that the texts speak in their favor. Reading them was quite triggering for me because I see a scared person, who asks for basic things, from the only people she has around her, to help her in a really difficult situation, and is made to feel like she is asking for too much, has to repeatedly advocate for herself (while sick) and still doesn’t get her needs met. On one hand, she is encouraged by Kat to ask for help but practically it’s not happening. Especially Emerson and Drew in that second thread sounded like she is difficult and constantly pushed to ask for less or for something else than what she asked for. Seriously, it took 2.5 hours the first day to get a salad, which she didn’t want in the first place?! And the second day it’s a vegetarian, not vegan, burger.
The way Alice constantly mentioned that she doesn’t want to bother them and says that things are fine when they are clearly not, is very upsetting. I can’t speak to how Alice felt but it’s no wonder she reports this as not being helped/fed when she was sick. To me, this is accurate, whether or not she got a salad and a vegetarian burger the next day.
Honestly, the burger-gate is a bit ridiculous. Ben did report in the original article that you disputed these claims (with quite a lot of detail) so he reported it accurately. To me, that was enough to not update too much based on this. I don’t think it warranted the strongly worded letter to the Lightcone team and the subsequent dramatic claims about evidence that you want to provide to clear your name.
I can’t speak for Elliot but happy to help you dig that hole for yourself. Did she eat on the 15th? Or rather, did any of you help her eat proper nutritious meals that are appropriate for a sick vegan? On the 15, or the 16?
Again, it’s rediculous to keep discussing this as it seems not to be a crux for people but it’s so revealing that you think you are in the right here.
I think it’s telling, that Kat thinks that the texts speak in their favor. Reading them was quite triggering for me because I see a scared person, who asks for basic things, from the only people she has around her, to help her in a really difficult situation, and is made to feel like she is asking for too much, has to repeatedly advocate for herself (while sick) and still doesn’t get her needs met. On one hand, she is encouraged by Kat to ask for help but practically it’s not happening. Especially Emerson and Drew in that second thread sounded like she is difficult and constantly pushed to ask for less or for something else than what she asked for. Seriously, it took 2.5 hours the first day to get a salad, which she didn’t want in the first place?! And the second day it’s a vegetarian, not vegan, burger.
The way Alice constantly mentioned that she doesn’t want to bother them and says that things are fine when they are clearly not, is very upsetting. I can’t speak to how Alice felt but it’s no wonder she reports this as not being helped/fed when she was sick. To me, this is accurate, whether or not she got a salad and a vegetarian burger the next day.
Honestly, the burger-gate is a bit ridiculous. Ben did report in the original article that you disputed these claims (with quite a lot of detail) so he reported it accurately. To me, that was enough to not update too much based on this. I don’t think it warranted the strongly worded letter to the Lightcone team and the subsequent dramatic claims about evidence that you want to provide to clear your name.
To me, this is the biggest red flag in this whole situation. My work has been written about by journalists, with both negative spins and actual factual inaccuracies and whenever this happens, my first response is: here is where you are wrong, and here is the truth. Which, I know, because it’s about me and I know what happened (at least according to me).
If someone doesn’t believe me and they want the “receipts”, I can provide these later, but I don’t need them to dispute the claim in the first place. I understand this piece has a lot of information and responding to everything can take time but again, but the broad strokes shouldn’t take this long.
In fact, it seems that Nonlinear already had a chance to dispute some of the claims when they had their lengthy interview with Ben and it seems that they did because the piece says, multiple times, that there are conflicting claims from both parties about what happened. I’m unclear Nonlinear want to clarify and prove these in their favor or if they want to dispute additional claims that they have not disputed before. Either way, the vagueness is concerning and in my experience, it is a sign of possibly buying more time to figure out a spin.
I appreciate the overall style and tone of the piece. I believe Ben is trying to figure out what happened. With the material he had, he could easily write a much more damaging hit piece (as has been the case with some traditional investigative journalist in the past).
I’m not sure about the counterfactual impact, but I want to point out the relocating is a very challenging situation for a lot of people—being uprooted and adapting to a new environment is very disruptive to one’s life and can cause stress and worsen one’s mental health. I really want to encourage everyone who thinks about moving, especially for the sake of impact, to think about this carefully and take it into account, before they find themselves halfway across the globe, in a different culture, with no social network or family.
I appreciate the style and authenticity in this post. Would love to see more of this both from you and on the forum in general!
What do you mean by “not picking up”? As in registering after being accepted? It is certainly the case that some people think the way you do. Also, many people procrastinate on finalizing their registration. Now, how much of which is in your “unclaimed tickets” pool is an open question. For EAGxPrague quite close to the application/registration deadline we had maybe up to 150 people who were accepted but haven’t registered (and I had roughly 500 capacity). Not knowing if they are not coming or may just all register on the last day made it harder to accept other people and plan meals etc.
Once there is a confirmed registration number, that’s a bit easier to work with regarding estimates of who will show up but I find the conversion rate of accepted → registered more unpredictable. Especially since it was possible to apply for more conferences at once.
This is consistent with my experience. I agree these norms are good and make organizer’s lives easier, but there is always a drop out rate and it is possible to plan for that. Did Berkeley have an unusually high number of noshows? For EAGxPrague we worked with an estimate of about 10% which ended up being quite accurate. I don’t remember the exact number but I think we had about 450 registered and about 410 showed up (this does not include the people who actually canceled since they no longer show up as registered in the system). I think it would be possible to do a more detailed analysis of the drop out rate in time and the final number of noshows in case it’s useful for future organizers.
To give people some idea about the cost of EAGX’s: for Prague, where we had about 400 attendees, the cost was roughly £270 per person, and out of that, £120 was for food. Our venue didn’t have its own catering so we could arrange what we wanted on whatever scale we wanted. We could easily just do lunch and snacks.
Since I’m running the project in question (not Wytham Abbey), I would like to share my perspective as well. (I reached out to the author of the comment, Bob, in a DM asking him to remove the previously posted addresses and we chatted briefly about some of these points privately but I also want to share my answers publicly.)
ESPR can’t return the property or the money at the moment because there is currently no mechanism that we are aware of that would make it possible to legally send money “back to FTX” such that it would reliably make its way back to customers who lost their money. We will wait and see how the bankruptcy proceedings play out which will likely take years. For now, I have a responsibility to the staff, to the property, and to the project.
This project is not an EA project. It covers a broader scope of world-improving activities and organizations. It is not part of the Czech EA organization. I also personally don’t own the property—I’m the CEO of a separate organization (not ESPR, not CZEA) that owns it.
You ask that this purchase be disclosed publicly—this was always the plan. The transaction is very fresh and has only been finalized this week. We are in the process of making adjustments to the place before announcing its existence and an open call for applications for events.
Much has been discussed on the forum recently about the cost-effectiveness of purchasing property and about optics. I’ve been running various events for over 10 years and I’ve seen firsthand how places, where they happen, influence their outcomes. I’ve also seen how the lack of appropriate and ready-to-use venues was the reason for great events not happening. I wanted to create an inspiring and functional space that can help people to think, discuss and create good things—I’ve been developing the idea over the last couple of years. I’m happy to go into more details about the project and its vision but again, I would like to be able to officially announce it first.
This is an experimental project which has a theory of change that is well thought out but remains uncertain. We will see what happens once we are up and running and able to see the outcomes. Should it be the case that it seems like it doesn’t generate sufficient value and broadly speaking “doesn’t work” it will most certainly be reconsidered. The property can be sold and the money can go toward other projects.
Could I record the audio of my own post?
I’d like to make a brief note on the importance of translating EA content because I’ve often encountered a general idea which is something like “as a movement, we are basically mainly interested in people who already speak English so they’d just read the original and the translation wouldn’t bring any additional benefit”.
An answer to this could be a standalone forum post, but in short:
There are in fact, very talented people who could make great contributions to the movement who for a number of reasons don’t communicate in English that well. If our outreach is in English only, we will likely miss them.
Even if someone seems quite competent in their command of English but it may still impact their willingness to consume English content, and even if they do, they may not enjoy it as much because their comprehension is not 100%.
It seems that reading text in your primary language lands differently, especially when you want the reader to connect with the material emotionally. Reading it in your primary language seems to increase the extent to which you’re able to internalize the message (especially for someone with low comprehension skills in English)
A lot of EA material is already targeted at the English-speaking world and it can feel alienating—like it’s not REALLY meant for me. Sure, EA sounds interesting but it’s something for OTHER people, not me, living in *insert a small foreign city*.
There are a number of roles open in the Prague ecosystem, they’re all listed here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ikyq5e1eBy-9ZVDlt7aCeJop_uOacKN0h9neAREFmt8/edit#gid=1933265623
You can apply here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdATSsO9KfNoUbpfAbIEbvXMBD2yRShLZQ5EJfr8vKNZ84DmA/viewform
I’d like to highlight the upcoming Prague Fall Season which is hiring for Operations Associates, Events Associates, and an Executive Assistant:
https://praguefallseason.com/
Announcing: the Prague Fall Season
Hi Gregory, I will be running these workshops together with John, so I’d like to respond to your comments.
I think that it is fair for you to post your warning/recommendation but as far as I can tell, today’s CFAR is quite different from the organization that you say demonstrated “gross negligence and utter corporate incompetence” in the past. You say that the evidence is sparse that anything has changed and I’m not sure about that but I’m also not the person to make that case because I’m not CFAR—I’m a CFAR developer running a project with other CFAR developers and a couple of CFAR core staff.I can only speak for myself as one of the co-leads of this project and what I can say is that we see the skulls. They’re a bit hard to ignore since they’re everywhere! But that is exactly why we think we have enough of an understanding of what happened and how to learn from it. We are very much aware of the previous mistakes and believe that we can do better. And we want to try because we think these workshops are good and important and that we can do them well.
I generally think that people and organizations deserve second chances but ultimately it is for the people to decide. We will be fulfilling our role as event organizers by mitigating risks to our participants, to the extent that we reasonably can (based on CFAR’s past mistakes and also based on our own experience and judgment). And our participants will decide if they trust us enough to come to an immersive workshop with a bunch of other humans who they will interact with for 4.5 days.
Hi Brian, I hope that you’ll eventually be able to make it to the workshops, we certainly hope that there will be more next year.
Eventually, we would like to update the website but we have limited capacity and we were focused on getting the dates and applications out there as early as we knew they were happening so people could pencil in the dates. Now we are also running admissions, coordinating staff, working on content and logistics etc. Given all of this, it will likely take us a couple of more weeks to update.
I know you explain it later in the post, but I would prefer that the phrase “tell the person what you think their problems are” not be used to describe people offering doom. IMHO it’s very bad if people think about it this way.
The framing that seems more accurate to me is something like “why will this person have failed in their efforts?” Basically, how do you think they are doomed, hence the doom circle. You are trying to see how things are going to play out for them and should they not succeed, what happened?
FYI Émile’s pronouns are they/them.