In brief, large speaker events and workshops, depending on the needs of a local group. Perhaps self-evidently, large speaker events are best for nascent chapters trying to attract interest; workshops for augmenting the engagement and/or skill of existing members. There’s some information about this in the Organizer FAQ, as well a prompts about this in the EAGx organizer application and on the “Get Involved’ tab of effectivealtruism.org.
ricoh_aficio
Karma: 208
Effective Altruism Grants project update
Wonderful of you to offer! Follow-up hasn’t been weak across-the-board but it’s certainly a hard thing for organizers to juggle on top of everything else.
We have limited resources set up for this at the moment, such as: a) the ability to reach out to Harri for local group advice and funding, b) copies of Doing Good Better you can use for a book club, c) the chance to request EA Global tickets to raffle off, d) a series of follow-up emails to attendees, and e) brief advice for running a follow-up event (https://goo.gl/w9fkYS).
Happy to take suggestions for other things we might do.
I’m curious what prompted this change—did organizers encounter a lot of difficult converting new conference attendees to more engaged EAs?
They were often stretched so thin from making the main event happen that they didn’t have the capacity to ensure that their follow-up events were solid. We think part of the problem will be mitigated if the events themselves are smaller and more targeted towards groups with a specific level of EA understanding.
I’m also curious about what sort of support CEA will be providing to smaller, less-established local groups, given that fewer groups will receive support for EAGx.
Local groups can apply for funding through the EAGx funding application, as well as use the event-organizing resources we generated for EAGx. Depending on the size and nature of the event, they can receive individualized support from different CEA staff working on community development, such as Harri, Amy, Julia, and/or Larissa. If they’re running a career or rationality workshop they may be able to get 80,000 Hours’ or CFAR’s advice or direct support.
Here are the event-organizing resources, if you’d like to check them out: https://goo.gl/zw8AjW
Ah, the wording makes this unclear. It isn’t that we’re dictating that more events take on the more onerous format, but instead restricting the name “EAGx” to the few events who already believe it is best for their region to run a full-weekend event. In fact, we’re encouraging most groups /not/ to do this, and instead run smaller, more targeted events.
The real shifts are a) discouraging groups from running events that are more intensive than suit their circumstances and b) using a different name for the less-intensive events to avoid the confusion of expectations experienced by lots of attendees last year. (To the latter, one of the main feedback types events received was “the content was too elementary” or “the content was too advanced,” often about the same event.)
We’re still providing funding and support to events not entitled EAGx.
Thanks for the question.
In brief, we’re of the view that a) EA is more talent-constrained rather than funding-constrained (https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-you-should-focus-more-on-talent-gaps-not-funding-gaps/), and b) the people we’d like to have do direct work in many cases already exist in the EA sphere but don’t have the affordance or nudge to dedicate themselves to EA work full-time.
We, in collaboration with 80,000 Hours, have been tracking the rate and value of engagement of people we try to engage with EA. We have figured out ways to easily and systematically do early-stage engagement of potential EAs with e.g. the Doing Good Better book giveaway, 80,000 Hours decision tool, and Giving What We Can pledge. However, our sense is that the majority of value comes from the few people who are most engaged, and that effective use of talent requires greater levels of engagement. (It’s more valuable to have e.g. one full-time, knowledgeable employee than the same number of hours of labor from many, short-term volunteers.) Similarly, funding that is more values-aligned can be put towards more flexible, less conventional funding areas. The scalable vehicles we developed aren’t very equipped to increase engagement.
We’ve been really impressed many people already in the community, but when we encourage them to work for an EA organization, start their own EA project, and/or seek out other EAs with whom to collaborate, this often falls flat for lack of funding, support structure, or a clear sense of what to do/read next. In addition to the shifts in EAGx, we’re attempting to address this with EA Grants, sequenced EA content, changes to EA Global, the Involvement Guide on effectivealtruism.org, and increased funneling to 80,000 Hours’ one-on-one career coaching.
We’ll have more on this on the CEA blog shortly.
EAGx Relaunch
Appreciate you posting! I actually drew inspiration from that for the Involvement Guide, but if you think I missed something I’d be more than happy to hear it.
Thanks for the comment. It wasn’t very necessary there, so even though it seems fairly innocuous to me given its frequency of use I decided to nix it.
Introducing the EA Involvement Guide
Use “care” with care.
Fun does not preclude burnout (by Andrew Critch)
“Entitlement to believe” is lacking in Effective Altruism (by Andrew Critch)
That’s right. We’re also asking that organizers plan a follow-up event(s) to capture the interest generated by the event, but otherwise intend for the commitment to end post-conference.
Apply to be an EAGx Event Director
Giving What We Can 2014 Year in Review
Hi UriKatz, there’s a group of us trying to do just that, and we’d love to have your help. Join the EA Nerdfighters Facebook group and I’ll brief you on what we’ve been up to. :)
The next upcoming deadline is August 30th, with new application deadlines every quarter. You can find more details about this here: https://www.eaglobal.org/eagx-when/