Update on spending for CEA-run events

Thanks for the update. 

I'd like to recommend that part of the process review for providing travel grant funding includes consideration of the application process timing for CEA-run or supported events. In my experience, key dates in the process (open, consideration/decision, notification of acceptance, notification of travel grant funding) happen much closer to the date  of the event than other academic or trade conferences. 

For example, in 2022, several Australian EAs I know applied ~90 days in advance of EAG London or EAG SF, but were accepted only around 30-40 days before the event. 

A slow application process creates several issues for international attendees:

1. Notice is needed for employment leave. Prospective attendees who are employed usually need to submit an application for leave with 1+ months notice, especially for a trip of ~1 week or longer needed for international travel. Shorter notice can create conflict or ill-feeling between the employee and employer.
2. Flight prices increase as the travel date approaches. An Australian report recommended booking international flights 6 months ahead of the date of travel. A Google report recommended booking international travel (US<>Europe) at least 50-180 days [~2-6 months] ahead of the date of travel. By 30 days out - when my colleagues received notice of acceptance - flights were much more expensive, and some of the most convenient travel dates were unavailable.
3. Fit with other commitments and needs. For parents, people with caring responsibilities, or people with disabilities, a slow process can lead to stress and conflict about whether to accept the invitation and how to make arrangements to support attendance at short notice.
4. Visa issues. Visa applications can take weeks or months to approve by the destination country.

Providing travel grant funding can help to "smooth over" some of these issues, e.g., by subsidising the increase in flight costs, offsetting the (literal or emotional) costs of navigating / negotiating commitments and needs. It is not a panacea - the application process itself also needs to be reviewed to reduce these issues. If the travel grant funding is significantly reduced but no change is made to the application process, there may be an unintended consequence of fewer international attendees who would otherwise be a good fit for events.

I support a review of travel grant funding processes. I ask that you also consider the application process (especially timing) and its relationship with the travel grant funding process, to improve the experience for international attendees so that the flagship events of EA Global can continue to live up to their name.

FWIW there were lots of cause area themed / profession themed dinners at external venues on both days of EAGx Oxford and EAG London this year, despite the catered dinner being available, so that seems like a sensible area for you guys to cut spending.

A bit concerned about travel funding reductions though, as that might have negative effects on cultural diversity within EA. Might make sense to target this reduction further, eg - retaining funding for people in LMICs but not providing it for people in HICs.

I am somewhat surprised by some of these choices, and I'd be somewhat interested in hearing more about the reasoning (but no problem if you think it's too time-consuming to explain).

Re catering, here's my quick, very low-confidence estimate:

• I'd have thought that access to catered dinners maybe increases the value of EAG by as much as making the event have twenty more minutes in it. (Because people otherwise have to go find dinner elsewhere in a way that might be inefficient, and they will have to get dinner in a place that is worse for mingling.)
• Maybe the cost per person is like $30 (and if you don't cater, the attendees have to spend money on dinner themselves)
• So the dinners buy you an EAG-equivalent hour for $90.
• I'd have thought that EAG typically costs ~$4000 per attendee, and causes like 20 engagement-hours, which gives us a price of $200 per engagement hour. This is more expensive than the dinner, so I'd have thought the dinner looks cost-effective assuming EAG is cost-effective overall. 
  • EDIT: Actually, I think my $4k estimate is probably wrong; I now vaguely remember that EAGs cost $2k/attendee, at which the dinners still look better than EAG as a whole but not as much better.

We might need to limit capacity at certain events (whereas previously we always accepted people if they were above a certain bar).

What do you mean by this? I don't get why the policy shouldn't be "always accept people if they are above a certain bar". Perhaps the bar should change, but it feels to me like the obvious way of deciding who to accept should be something like "for everyone who wants to attend, estimate how much value it would produce for them to attend, and estimate how costly it would be, and then accept everyone where value exceeds benefits". It sounds like you're suggesting doing something else--what other policy are you suggesting following?

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.

I hope that there is an emphasis on increasing the quality and focus on virtual events in the future. I want to be able to meet people in different cities who can't cover travel costs themselves but it feels like virtual events are not as prioritised, so in the past the types of people I would have wanted to talk to mostly did not engage as much with them. 

1. Catering will likely be cut down. We’ll likely have to stop providing all three of breakfast, lunch, and dinner on each day for our conferences — we still expect to have some food or snacks available, but it’s currently unclear exactly what we’ll be able to provide.

I'd be curious to see a breakdown of catering costs in SF, DC & London if you have them - specifically costs per meal, for drinks, and for snacks and what % of the total budget food has been. Things I think are more or less important (but don't have a sense of where the budget cut-offs are, hence the request for breakdown)

• I think having some kind of breakfast (even if it's just bread/peanut butter/ hummus/bananas) feels super important for essentially buying an extra 1-2 hours per person. If catering doesn't allow for a lighter breakfast and/or doesn't allow outside food etc. [edit: breakfast could also just be snacks/protein bars/etc.]
• From my limited catering knowledge, drinks are usually the most expensive, so if not serving drinks during opening / closing speeches could potentially subsidise breakfasts / more food, that seems worth it. 
• Snacks also feel more optional

There's several comments here about the catering part, so I just wanted to say that cutting down on catering doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I'll bring some trail mix.

Catering will likely be cut down. We’ll likely have to stop providing all three of breakfast, lunch, and dinner on each day for our conferences — we still expect to have some food or snacks available, but it’s currently unclear exactly what we’ll be able to provide.

This seems like it might be a bit of a false economy. People need to eat, and there are probably economies of scale in food purchasing that make it easier to buy in bulk (both financially and in time spent). Additionally, if food is funded by CEA (rather than from ticket sales) then the conferences are buying it with pre-tax dollars. Also, proper catering helps the conference have proper vibes.

Against this we have to consider the fact that not everyone likes the same food, for example if the conference only serves vegan food but some attendees want to eat meat. But on the whole my impression is the median attendee has found the food satisfactory.

My guess is that if you (hypothetically) offered people the choice between tickets with and without food, with the price difference set as the average per-capita cost of catering, then most people would choose to pay the higher price.

It seems like a good solution to consider would be to host a few/several EA global events/conferences/other events in countries with cheaper operating costs. There are several countries that are cheaper than US/UK and are still extremely safe and accessible for several people (if anything, some other countries have more liberal visa conditions that would cut down visa spending costs as well). Money spent per person could go long way in other countries and you wouldn't need to compromise funding people who could benefit from the conferences but can't afford them otherwise. 

I really like the availability of food at EAGs. I'd spend more and be hungrier if that weren't the case. Here are some suggestions to reduce costs while not reducing availability:

• Reduce the amount of alcohol. This feels less important to me, though I guess I don't really drink so I'm biased
• Reduce the amount of snacks/ deserts. I like these but they seem less important than ensuring people are fed
• Have less fancy vegan food. I would happily eat beyond meat burgers like 25% of the time, or as a filler alongside the nicer food
• Have less huel/soylent. I like this, but maybe there is a cheaper option. The bottled stuff is pretty pricey.

On point 3. I can imagine a "staggered" stipend system worth experimenting with, where volunteers can choose from e.g. 0, 100, 200, 500 USD etc. based on their own needs.

Reasons why I think this could work:
- Some volunteers that have less financial stability could really benefit from getting this option (the intrinsic motivation for wanting to volunteer doesn't take away  thoughts of struggling financially. And I'm not saying volunteering should be an alternative for earning money but if that ends up being the decision ultimately, some people might need to decide to spend those volunteer hours doing other work. Especially if the volunteering requires several hours of travelling.)
- Volunteers are nudged to think about trade-offs (e.g. do I really need the additional 100 USD if for example they are choosing between a 100 and 200 stipend)

The idea of there being increased financial barriers to attending conferences concerns me a lot.

I'd hate to end up in a situation where lower income people or students are discouraged from even applying because they know they won't be able to afford it. I know it would be soul crushing for many people to receive an email saying they've been accepted, but be unable to consider attending due to financial barriers. 

I'd have a preference for smaller events where people are guaranteed funding if they need. I think that looking after a smaller group of people very well can be better than a large group of people having a worse experience.

There's a chance that these increased financial barriers could negatively affect the geographic and socioeconomic diversity in EA that some people have been working hard to improve.

Is there information about how the rest of CEA's budget is affected by the circumstances above? That might help people put these reductions in context.

1. Travel grant funding will likely be more restrictive. Previously we’ve funded people to travel to any EA conference they’ve been accepted to. We expect to retain some amount of travel funding moving forwards, but we’ll likely have to be much more conservative about how much we give and who we give it to. When planning around an event, we’d recommend you act under the assumption that we will not be able to grant your travel funding request (unless it has already been approved). 

I think it would be good to clarify how this affects people with less financial stability and/or who are based in countries that are farther away (specifically for EAG's). To me, providing funding for these groups seems like the biggest positives, since they would be least likely to attend without support. [edit: and generally have less opportunities for meeting the international EA community]

Thanks for sharing these details.

We might introduce a variable pricing ticketing system where we ask people with higher incomes to pay more for their tickets (we expect to still have free and reduced cost tickets available for students and those on lower incomes).

Is this new? I recall there being a tiering structure already. Or does this effectively mean there will be new, extra-high tiers on top?

I wonder if cheaper venues further out could be worth considering?

If most conference attendees don't live in the city but only travel there for the conference, they might not care much if it's in the center or else where. I (and many others I spoke to) actually would prefer an EAG London in a less expensive, less central part of the city.

Thanks for the update. I think it would be valuable if you further update which of all these [things that might happen] are actually going to happen, once you know.

Excited to hear that you're considering variable ticket pricing!

This worked very well for us at German EA retreats - people paid anywhere from 50-200€ per ticket and we reached our target of 100€ on average.

Have we considered not having the events be vegan? Seems like it adds a lot of cost. If they were 50% vegan how much would be saved?

I'd be excited about CEA hosting or supporting more virtual conferences. These are far cheaper than in-person events, are more accessible in many ways, and I'd estimate they capture about 60% of the value for an individual attendee that an in-person event does.

I could imagine 2-3 of these happening in 2023, perhaps including some for more specific audiences like the previous student summit. These would have the advantage of being able to have a much lower bar for entry (since costs don't increase as linearly as in-person conferences). They could therefore be a place to absorb all those who won't be accepted to conferences or won't be able to travel. 

[I was on the organising team for EAGxVirtual 2022]

Thanks for the update!

I am curious about the odds of EA-London not being fully catered so I created a market: "Will EAG London 2023 be fully catered?".