I am an Australian with an entrepreneurial spirit based in Barcelona. I have a background in linguistics and English teaching, but now I’m doing community building for our EA Barcelona city group and really enjoying it. I’m also a music artist, producer and video maker on the side.
Melanie Brennan
Karma: 109
Purpose-driven entrepreneurship: How to maximize your social impact
I would agree with Rebecca here. In my case, attending my first EAGx dramatically changed the course of my career (I’m now doing community building professionally), and if I hadn’t attended, I think there’s a fairly high chance that I’d now be in a totally different non-EA related career, and most likely a less impactful one (but that bit’s harder to measure, of course). In comparison, I attended EAG London this year, which was my second in-person conference. And while it was a really great experience all round—I learned a lot, made a lot of useful connections & strengthened old ones, and also gave (hopefully useful) advice to others—it was definitely less impactful than my first EAGx in terms of how much it directly affected my career path.
Congratulations on achieving some very impressive results with Carreras con Impacto, and with great female representation too! It would be interesting to read a follow-up report in 6-12 months to see what the more long-term impact of the program has been.
Keep up the great work! :)
What a great initiative!
Just a quick question regarding this:
Phase 2: Community members receive funds (Aug 20)
We’ll give everyone $100 to donate; more if you’ve been active in the EA community. Fill out a 2-minute form to claim your $100, plus bonuses for:
I’m writing this on August 20th—is it too late to claim the $100? If not, where is the 2-minute form you mentioned that we need to fill out? Thank you!
Thanks for writing up this concise summary, Tristan!
I second the advice from the 2-hour cocktail party :)
Or her/them? Good leaders don’t have to be male.
Done! Thanks a lot, Ben, for bringing this opportunity to our attention and explaining how to navigate the survey. Fingers crossed for a positive outcome for Scottish chickens <3
Edit: It took me around 15 minutes to read through the main points of the forum post and complete the survey (I only did the pages on Animal Welfare, Public Policy, Further Comments and About You). The survey website is very easy to navigate.
Wonderful! Many thanks :)
Oppenheimer & the world’s deadliest weapon: A discussion on nuclear risks
Very well written and eye-opening post, thanks Will!
Something I’d be really excited to see, and that I think would be really useful for community builders when doing outreach/speaking to people very new to the movement:
Information flow:
Someone could create a guide to what EA is, in practice: all the different projects, and the roles they fill, and how they relate to one another.
Someone could create something like an intra-EA magazine, providing the latest updates and featuring interviews with core EAs.
Someone could take on a project of consolidating the best EA content and ideas, for example into a quarterly journal.
Thanks Neil, I’ve left some suggested changes (mostly just additional questions I found worked well) in your doc :)
Hi again! We finally did it ;) Your discussion questions were really helpful, thanks again for sharing them. I’d also love to make a few suggestions to them, if possible?
I’m super excited for P4A 2024!
Idea for community builders: Try to get a group of your community members together so you can all film your videos at once, followed by a fun activity. It reduces the overall time each person spends on filming and makes the process much more collaborative and enjoyable, as well as amplifying your impact significantly. We are going to do this with some members of EA Barcelona this weekend and I’m feeling much more motivated than last year when I just filmed at home alone.
Vamos a por ello!
I’m sorry to hear that, Aderonke, that must have been really tough. Maybe as group organisers in quite “internationalised” cities, we should expect some amount of transience as the norm. A potential upside of this that someone pointed out to me the other day, is that maybe people discover/get involved in EA in our kinds of cities, but then they take it with them wherever they go. So while it’s a shame for us to lose some members, the involvement they have with our groups may help them to start or strengthen EA communities in other places too one day. Just a thought!
Thanks, Milena! Yes, cat teammates serve a noble purpose too ;)
I would love to have a chat with some of the CBs from Germany about the language barriers we each face, and transient groups. I’ll reach out soon via the Groups slack :) Cheers!
Thanks for your support, Jaime!
Yes, I think a team brainstorming session would be useful. The more voices we hear on this, the clearer it will be what needs to happen to improve the situation. Let’s discuss this soon in Slack!
EA Barcelona: Our first year of impact
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this incredibly complicated topic. It’s easy to see the care you took in writing such a personal, nuanced reflection on what has happened in your part of the world, and you’re very brave for doing so. My heart goes out to you and your loved ones that have been so terribly affected.
It’s interesting to hear how your usual “EA thinking” hasn’t helped you much in your current situation. Perhaps other models of thinking and acting are necessary in crisis situations. And for those of us who are fairly removed from this particular case, it definitely doesn’t feel “right” to dismiss attempts to help/donate to foreign aid given that it’s comparatively less cost-effective than giving to the usual Givewell recommended charities. I think as a community of people whose goal is primarily to help others, we ought to do more. And I would agree with you that the suffering happening in your region, or in wars in general, is somehow on another level, both in terms of the direct experience and the trauma it leaves behind, than the suffering created by disease. However, as someone who’s been fortunate enough to escape both, I can only speculate.
Nice one, thanks for sharing your experience and the discussion questions. I am thinking of trying this out with my local group, will let you know how we get on :)
This is really impressive and inspiring to see! Big congratulations to the team for your hard work in putting together what seems like a highly impactful conference :) Looking forward to seeing how EA Nigeria continues to evolve.