I thought it was interesting that in Will MacAskill's recent posts about decentralising EA, he said that he will avoid giving opening and closing speeches at EAG.
Currently, the process by which speakers are selected for EAG appears opaque to me, and most talks appear to be by 'senior EAs' and 'EA leaders' with high social status in the community.
To tackle the risk of certain individuals being selected based on social status in the community, I think attendees who are accepted should be able to submit blinded applications containing ideas for talks and workshops for EA conferences. The talks and workshops that the conference organisers believe will provide the most value should then be selected.
I think this could be a nice way to achieve greater value from EA conferences, increase the diversity of speakers / workshop hosts and reduce the impression of specific individuals being 'the face' of EA to spread out PR risks and reduce groupthink.
(I'm contracting for CEA's events team to work on EAGxNYC)
I like this idea - It'd be nice to hear from a wider range of people in the community, and away to give more people a platform - which would be good for defusing fame in the community.
We're doing a non-blinded version of this for EAGxNYC - I think ~30% of applicants were people who we wouldn't have thought to ask to present - which is good I think. BUT it is riskier or more costly as an event organiser to select them (you don't know if they're good speakers, you have to vet them and their work before deciding etc).