I run EA Anywhere, a virtual group for people who don’t have local groups nearby.
I co-founded EA Russia and have been involved in community building for the last three years. I contributed to several EA organizations as a research intern, created a Youtube channel with EA-related videos, and studied the MIT Micromasters program on global health and development policy.
I’d be happy to chat about EA or introduce you to the EA Anywhere group:
David, thank you for a useful summary.
I already use some of the techniques (for example, closed space with chairs in the circle creates more friendly and warm atmosphere, than open space with low density and classroom style chairs).
We’ve been organizing meetups for 4 month and made some mistakes. Sometimes guests were bored, or they were expecting something else, because we chose improper audience sources. But meetups become better as we learn, and we’ll use this advices to make them even better.
For me the most important idea here is to think more about the purpose of meetup and use it as a framework, reflect on it at the start and at the end (I’ve often started with logistics like timeline or rules).