Manuel Allgaier

Karma: 815

Former director of EA Germany and EAGxBerlin 2022 event lead, currently on a career break to explore some longtermist & AI Safety ideas as well as work on personal (non-public) projects

Bio: I worked full-time in EA movement building (funded by CEA) as Director of EA Berlin (2019-21) and Director of EA Germany (2021-22) and EAGxBerlin Event Lead (2022). Previously, I worked in sustainability consulting and charity management, studied environmental science, economics & IT and volunteered in lived and worked in Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Amsterdam and Berlin.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelallgaier/

Manuel Allgaier 24 Jun 2019 10:14 UTC
4 points
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on: Effective Altruism London Landscape in 2019
Thanks! I found this (and the other EA London resources) quite useful for EA Berlin Community Building strategy. In particular your focus on “coordinating and supporting EA (sub-)groups” seems effective.
Berlin is not yet at a point where we have active sub-groups organizing events for almost every cause area and field, though, so in our situation, it seems to make sense to focus a bit on organizing events as well (in addition to 1-1′s). I’ll keep an eye out for proactive members who might be interested in organizing their own events or coordinating their own sub-groups, though, maybe we’ll then make similar progress.

Manuel Allgaier 27 Oct 2019 17:55 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: Jan_Kulveit’s comment on: A single person decides about funding for community builders world-wide
CZEA was able to find some private funding even before CBG existed
Interesting! Up until now, my intuition was that private funding is only feasible after the group has been around for a few years, gathered sufficient evidence for their impact and some (former student) members earn enough and donate to it (at least this was the case for EA Norway, as far as I know).
Somewhat off-topic, but if you have time, I’d be curious to hear how CZEA managed to secure early private funding. How long had CZEA been active when it first received funding, what kind of donor and what do you think convinced them? (If you’d rather not share that publicly, feel free to email me at manuel.allgaier@ea-berlin.org and if you lack time to elaborate that’s fine too!)

Manuel Allgaier 29 Oct 2019 9:37 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Catherine Low’s comment on: An update on plans for EAGx 2020
Interesting idea!
Re. an additional EAGx in the UK:
I’d expect the applicants who were not accepted to EAG London to be based not only in the UK but in entire Europe (unless you have data that suggests otherwise?), and as flights are cheap in Europe (<$100 return to most major cities), it seems that an EAGx in any major European city is sufficiently accessible. Or is there anything I overlooked?
If we assume that it doesn’t matter much if an EAGx is hold in the UK or elsewhere in Europe, then the application-capacity-ratio of previous European EAGx conferences could be a good indication to see if there’s more demand. Does anyone know how many people applied to previous European EAGx conferences, and how many were accepted?
This might not hold true for the US, though, as flights from the East Coast to the West Coast are more expensive.

Manuel Allgaier 29 Oct 2019 9:59 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: Catherine Low’s comment on: An update on plans for EAGx 2020
soften the blow of rejection
more accessible than EAG
Maybe retreats organized by local groups could fulfill that purpose as well?
Here an example from Germany: Last August, we organized the “EA Unconference” retreat, which was relatively accessible and friendly. We chose the criteria such that anyone genuinely interested in EA could fulfill them [1] and found that all applicants fit the criteria—we didn’t need to turn down anyone. We then spent three days on a farmhouse, discussing EA, supporting each other with cause prio, career planning and other relevant topics and also having some fun together and connecting on a personal level as well.
Appendix: More details for anyone considering organizing retreats:
The retreat was well-received, we had 50 participants from three countries and they rated it an 8.9/10 on average, on average 7x as valuable as what they would have done otherwise (median: 3x as valuable). Some also updated their career plans. It also did not take us that much time to organize it, as content was mainly participant-driven. We spent €3500 in total (€70 pp incl. food & accommodation), which was entirely covered by our sliding scale tickets (participants could choose ticket price themselves and paid €0-200), so we did not need any additional funding. We’re planning to do one again this winter or next summer. If other community builders are interested, I could maybe write a more detailed evaluation as soon as I have time (let me know if you’d find that useful!).
[1] more info on the Unconference & criteria: http://bit.ly/ea_unconference_info

Manuel Allgaier 30 Oct 2019 10:32 UTC
5 points
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on: Who runs the Forum?
Thanks for the introductions, and for your work to coordinate knowledge sharing in the community!
I have one or two ideas on how to make the forum even better, are you interested in feedback? If you are, what would be the best way to submit feedback?
80,000 hours uses this feedback forum powered by Uservoice, which seems useful to not only receive suggestions but also prioritize them based on user votes. Would it make sense to use something similar for the EA Forum? Else, I can also just put my ideas in an email or not share them at all (in case you’re too busy to look into it) - as you prefer!

Manuel Allgaier 31 Oct 2019 14:27 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: KatieGlass’s comment on: An update on plans for EAGx 2020
Thanks for the info! Adjusting the EAGx capacity seems like a good solution (at least for Europe), let’s keep this in mind when choosing a venue.

Manuel Allgaier 17 Nov 2019 10:48 UTC
33 points
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on: “EA residencies” as an outreach activity
Great idea! EA Berlin (Germany) is happy to welcome traveling EAs and organize meetups and/or residencies.
I’m coordinating the EA Berlin chapter, we have a rather active EA community with ~30 regulars, ~200 people who joined at least one event and ~500 followers (both students and professionals), plus an active Rationality community. We have regular events (weekly meetups, monthly speaker events, socials and retreats) and some 10 people are also studying / working on AI-related subjects and interested in AI Safety.
However, one thing we’re somewhat lacking is personal contact with EA orgs. Most of the most engaged EAs moved to the UK/US to work at an EA org, and while we have a few people in Berlin working at EA orgs remotely, we could definitely benefit from more (personal) contact with EA orgs, and they might find interesting people here as well. I’d be happy to welcome traveling EAs and (if they wish) organize meetups, connect them to others for 1-1′s, give travel advice and organize a residency (arrange couchsurfing or give hostel/hotel recommendations).
I’m also interested in talking to people who live in places which they think would benefit from this type of thing.
Buck, not sure how relevant Berlin is as it’s not the US, but if you want to chat nevertheless, feel free to email me! manuel.allgaier@ea-berlin.org

Manuel Allgaier 17 Nov 2019 10:53 UTC
27 points
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on: “EA residencies” as an outreach activity
Related idea: Make it a habit to reach out to local EA community when traveling?
Lots of EAs already travel quite a bit for work already (e.g. visiting conferences, retreats etc.) or in their vacation. I as EA Berlin group organizer am happy to organize a meetup with the EA Berlin community whenever someone interesting visits, but I often don’t hear about them visiting if they’re not already in my network or proactively reach out via the EA Berlin website or Facebook, which some do but some don’t.
If every EA who’s generally open to meet people makes it a habit to reach out to the local community when traveling (e.g. by looking them up on the map of the EA Hub (www.eahub.org)), then the local group organizers could organize a meetup or connect them to specific people for 1-1′s, thereby giving them a low effort way to meet interesting people. This would also eliminate / mitigate risks of coming across as patronizing, arrogant or weird.
This could work even if there’s no organized group in a city, as long as at least one of the local EAs filled out their profile on the EA Hub.

Manuel Allgaier 6 Dec 2019 12:42 UTC
29 points
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on: A single person decides about funding for community builders world-wide
Meta: Risk of false info spread through incorrect headline, and how we could avoid that
In a recent discussion on the EA philanthrophy landscape, one person expressed concerns about the “fact that only a single person decides on CB Grants”, which is not true (as Harri explained in his comment). That person had the info from reading this forum post (don’t know if she read the entire post or only the headline), but apparently she did not read Harri’s comment and therefore assumed this to be true. In this case, I could correct her assumption and explain that it’s actually not a single person making these decisions, but in other cases, this incorrect statement might spread further without being corrected.
This seems potentially very harmful to the community and I wonder how we could avoid these risks. One useful norm is certainly to double-check any statements before sharing them (which that person could have done), but another one might also be to approach such topics more carefully, e.g. contacting CEA before writing a post based on an incorrect assumption (though I can see how the CEA’s org chart makes it seem this way) or framing posts differently (e.g. as question instead of statement). (Note that I’m still strongly in favor of discussing such topics on the EA forum and elsewhere)
Curious about your thoughts!
@Jan, please note that I do find your post important, particularly for bringing up the risks of having only one institution giving out CB grants, and I’m glad you wrote it! Please keep writing such posts! I just want to avoid risks for spreading false info.

Manuel Allgaier 8 Dec 2019 17:16 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: JanB’s comment on: A single person decides about funding for community builders world-wide
Thanks for taking the time to reply and update the title! :)

Yes, I saw your disclaimer and think it’s helpful, people might indeed not read it or disregard it as the former title sounded rather certain.

Manuel Allgaier 29 Jan 2020 12:12 UTC
1 point
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on: Call for beta-testers for the EA Pen Pals Project!
Nice initiative!
If it works well and reliably, you could ask CEA if they want to add to the “get involved” part of the EA website ( https://www.effectivealtruism.org/get-involved/ )

Manuel Allgaier 8 Feb 2020 8:53 UTC
1 point
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on: Responsible Biorisk Reduction Workshop, Oxford May 2020
This seems potentially high value, thanks a lot for the initiative!
Do you a specific target audience in mind? E.g. people with biology or policy background, people already working in biosecurity or just (EA-aligned) people generally interested in the field? I’ll forward it to some EAs working in biosecurity now, happy to share it further if you wish.
All the best for your workshop!

Manuel Allgaier 8 Feb 2020 8:58 UTC
4 points
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on: Responsible Biorisk Reduction Workshop, Oxford May 2020
side-note: Appreciate how accessible you made this
I appreciate the “solidarity ticket” system & the public (but not too prominent) announcement here in the forum. I have the impression retreats like this one are often shared within closed networks only and/or have high entrance barriers (fees etc.), and to me, this seems like a better way to actually reach the most relevant people, even if they’re not in the right networks already. There might be more considerations that I’m not aware of, though.

Manuel Allgaier 8 Feb 2020 9:03 UTC
2 points
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on: Responsible Biorisk Reduction Workshop, Oxford May 2020
Is there already an online platform for EAs in biosecurity (besides the Facebook group)?
Other subgroups (EA Community Builders, EAs working in policy, EAs in Operations etc.) have active discussions in Slack workspaces, which seem great value. If you don’t have that yet, I’d consider starting one and thinking carefully about criteria before inviting people (see “start with who” medium blog post)
If this does exist, I as EA Community Builder would appreciate hearing about it, so I can direct relevant group members there. Please comment or email me (manuel.allgaier@ea-berlin.org). Thanks!

Manuel Allgaier 25 Mar 2020 10:23 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: lucy.ea8’s comment on: Why not give 90%?

Only trammel told me why

Maybe others downvoted for the same reason (off-topic), saw that trammel already commented and then just upvoted Trammell’s comment (5 upvoted) instead of writing the same thing themselves?

Manuel Allgaier 26 Aug 2020 12:40 UTC
5 points
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on: EA Group Organizer Career Paths Outside of EA
(Full-time) Community Building as a way to build (charity) entrepreneurship career capital
I’ve been working full-time on EA Berlin & Germany since 1.5 years thanks to a CEA CB Grant, and I feel like the work is quite similar to (charity) entrepreneurship, with tasks like:
- Developing vision & strategy
- Building products, events & services (e.g. career advice or conferences)
- Communication / Marketing / “Sales” (all my meetups and career advice are free of cost, so I don’t “sell” anything, but I still need to write engaging newsletters, websites etc. to convince people new to EA that it’s worth their time)
- Operations: “Customer” Relationship Management, Event management, etc.
- Budgeting, measuring impact, communicating value to donors, possibly legal stuff etc.
In terms of career capital, I do think that credentials like “grew community to 200 engaged members”, “inspired x people to donate x%” or “helped x people to get higher impact jobs, be more productive, happy etc.” are worth something outside of EA as well, albeit CB does scale less well than tech start-ups who can easily get thousands or millions of users. I don’t have any data on that, though, so if anyone here has data or a better estimate, please let me know!

Manuel Allgaier 26 Aug 2020 12:44 UTC
5 points
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on: EA Group Organizer Career Paths Outside of EA
Potential downside of community building (CB): Slower professional development if working alone --> I’d recommend CB teams, training and/or mentorship
I feel like I learned a lot in my past 1.5 years as full-time community builder , but one major downside was working mostly alone without a “co-founder”, proper training or an “incubator” (as start-ups often have), and while I did have some advice & support from CEA and fellow professional CBs, I could have learned a lot faster if I had a co-founder, more training or more mentorship. I also initially underestimated the complexity of CB strategy (there are infinite possible projects and no-one really knows what works best for your specific group..) and the importance of mentorship. Now that I’m more aware of that, however, I found it not too difficult to get high-quality feedback from senior EA CBs.
For people starting out in Community Building, I’d recommend ideally having 2-3 committed people running a group rather than just one, or else maybe “interning” at an established group beforehand to learn faster and getting good mentorship right from the start.

Manuel Allgaier 26 Aug 2020 12:54 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: geoffrey’s comment on: EA Group Organizer Career Paths Outside of EA
can’t think of that many EA groups with >50 regulars
Agree that most EA groups are small, but those lead by full-time organizers such as London or (to a lesser extent) Berlin can reach those dimensions, see e.g. the EA London group directory. Berlin has 200-300 members who have been to an event at least once, an active Slack workspace and multiple meetup groups and projects running in parallel (mostly private, only some are public).

Manuel Allgaier 27 Aug 2020 17:27 UTC
3 points
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on: EA Group Organizer Career Paths Outside of EA
Thanks! Here are some further potential career paths for community builders , written by David Nash (EA London) in 2019 (got his permission to share this here).
@Ben_West if you find this useful you could link it in your article above to increase visibility.

Manuel Allgaier 5 Oct 2020 16:03 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Sign up for the Forum’s new email digest
Thanks for trying this!
These are additional functions I’d find useful, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the overhead for you:
- choose tags: e.g. subscribe to all (upvoted) posts with certain tags
- choose frequency: weekly, biweekly or monthly
Also, some blogs and forums seem to offer RSS feed, which I haven’t used myself yet but just based on its popularity, seems useful for others.