Actually, I will give an ignite talk at EA Global Oxford that is extremely relevant to this topic. This is the short pitch [edit: not so short anymore]:

Malcolm Ocean and I are working to set up a co-working space for EAs based on the format of the LW Study Hall. Just like the LWSH, which has been around for >2 years now, it will be a 24/7 web-chat with optional video streaming where people work on their own projects, probably in pomodoros and chat during the breaks.

Why does this solve your problem? If this becomes as well frequented as the LWSH (which seems plausible given the success of the LWSH which has been stably frequented while being on a buggy platform with little to no official moderation), it will create a network of more or less regular users who know each other and can refer people within the network. Over 2 years, I've personally met more than 200 people via the LWSH. Since Malcolm will host the site, he can also easily add functionalities. I've suggested adding a "project board" or similar to delegate/search for tasks, or we could connect the site to one of the existing boards. It will later also be possible to not only announce to other users of the chat what you're currently working on, but also other info, e.g. "looking for web designer". Finally, you can just meet there to co-work on EA projects remotely.

How is this different from .impact's chat rooms? (I haven't been in these chatrooms before, so I don't know how well frequented they are or what their chat experience is. These are my experiences with other rooms/the LWSH.) The video seems to be a key factor in creating the feeling of "I'm interacting with a human being". Plus, since Malcolm hosts the site, he'll do support and add more features. And you'll get a nudge to be productive while you are around. Win-win!

When will this be up? The current plan is to launch the hall within 2 weeks after EA Global (that is, by mid-September). Malcolm or I will post here again then.

Also, if you're at EA Global, do come to my ignite talk. It'll have screenshots to show what the site looks like, and you'll hear more. Or, if you miss the talk, talk to me! I'm one of the people in the blue staff shirts. :)

The 10 karma requirement to make your own posts on this forum makes it difficult for new people to share their own ideas here. Perhaps reducing it to 2 would be better.

I've been aware of this forum for a few months and have checked back to it a couple dozen times, but still don't have 10 karma because searching out for posts where you can make insightful comments to get 10 upvotes isn't actually that easy or quick.

I just met several EAs in person for the first time last night after following the community online for over a year. Here's the process:

I was travelling and knew I'd be in the Chicago area for two weeks. Upon arrival I searched for Chicago EA groups on Facebook, found one and asked if there were any meetups happening. There weren't, but people were interested and we set one up (Facebook event). 8-10 people showed and we had some good discussions. Pretty simple.

Takeaways:

(1) Create EA Facebook group for your area if there isn't one already

(2) Join the EA Facebook group for your area

(3) Attend meetups when travelers or new people express interest in meeting up

One thing I'd really love to see happen is for live Workathons to spread to other cities outside of SF. To my mind, they represent the best part about EA: people coming together, and getting important shit done.

One soft goal that I have for the next year is to get Workathons going in at least 5 other cities besides SF. In places like NYC, Oxford, and Bern, there are definitely enough critical mass of EAs that this kind of event could be organized on a weekly basis.

I just wanted to +1 this post! In general I agree there needs to be more opportunity for open communications with new EAs! This is why I think developing new local presences/chapters for EA is so important (cue, shameless plug of what I am working on!).

I should also note that all of us at Giving What We Can are always happy to chat with new people in the movement! Alison Woodman (alison.woodman@givingwhatwecan.org) is a great first point of contact, and I am also always happy to chat! (jonathan.courtney@givingwhatwecan.org)

An idea that just sprung to mind is that it might be good to have google hangouts happening every week/every other week for people in regions where there isn't already local presences set up, to enable this kind of connection.

Small idea: a second regular Hangout workathon at a time that is more friendly for European or Asian timezones.

Somewhat bigger: organize an EA-coworking weekend. People from different countries/cities come to together for a few days in a central place to on EA related or personal projects, for example finding out the destination of your next donation. This would require people to travel, but it might be worth it. I won't have the resources to organize it myself in the next few months, but feel free to take over the idea.

Even bigger: organize more weekend camps. GBS Switzerland organized a few summer and winter camps in Switzerland, and there is the LessWrong community weekend. At the latter, a lot of people from outside hubs attended.

For newcomers

Jonathan Courtney of Giving What We Can is who I consider the best person to contact about this.

For getting information

I want to work with Tom Ash to integrate Skillshare into the Effective Altruism Hub, build for it a survey which gets coverage of people's skills and expertise, and then imports those answers directly into their profiles on the EA Hub for them. From there, people can contact each other directly, which is already a component of the EA Hub. The next step, so people seeking info on the EA Hub could find other effective altruists to help them with a specific task more easily, would be to add a search function to the EA Hub. I know less about how this would be done, but this is my outline for the order in which things would be done. At some point in this process, there would need to be a concerted and strategic push to get as many skilled persons as possible to fill out and complete their profiles on the EA Hub. That way, the EA Hub would serve as a cross between Facebook and LinkedIn, except only spefically for effective altruists all over the world. I just started the conversation with .impact last week, so none of these projects have started yet, but we're working on it.

Something I could get up much quicker is rebooting the EA Buddy System, which is a system whereby effective altruists could contact each other over Skype or email when they don't feel connected to the community, and want to integrate more with someone relatable. Giles Edkins founded the EA Buddy System in 2014, but the project languished as he, I, and a couple other volunteers failed to coordinate, or just didn't have the spare time. Launching it again should be easy, as I know how to do it all, and the main bottleneck would be finding more volunteers across various characteristic dimensions such as professional sector of work, prioritized EA cause, timezone (for ease of scheduling, e.g., Skyp calls), geographic location, and other demographic dimensions. I can have a post explaining all this, rebooting it, and seeking volunteers within 24 hours.

Giles Edkins led the Buddy System before, but when I contacted him about it via Facebook about one month ago, he didn't respond. I'm assuming he's indisposed for time, by being busy with other EA projects (which I know he works on lots) and his job and personal life and whatnot. Until I hear back from him, I'll assume leadership of rebooting the EA Buddy System. I have new design ideas for it anyway. I'll get on it now I know there's demand from others.

Conclusion: I drafted this comments before I even reading your post. We've independently converged on all the same ideas. Awesome. Let's get organized to get all these started.

[Meet people where you live]

This is a standard idea, but worth a mention. Look at the list and map of EA groups - or indeed the map of EAs - and find one near you, then drop them an email to get in touch. People on the map have contact forms linked at the top of their EA Profiles.

Another factor is that the less connected people are often shy about reaching out to the busy, high-performing EAs they don’t personally know.

Most of the discussion here has been about the facilities, mostly online like EAhub, skillshare, LWSH, EASH, buddy systems, hangout events, and meetups. Even when the facilities are excellent, user-friendlly and findable, people might be too shy to actually ask.

Overcoming shyness is something different from creating tools, and probably more difficult. What could we do about that?

Some ideas (it would be great if you came up with something better):

• explicitly claiming that requests for help are welcome

• example stories of how individuals got connected and benefited from the connection

• possibility for anonymous questions

Some of them are already implemented to some extent.

I think a buddy system is good, but I think it would have to be more rigorously enforced and actively promoted, since buddies will tend to neglect each other given the common tendency to be afraid of meeting new people. Aside from that and meetups, a lot of it probably has to be organic.

[Creating a dedicated facebook group]

The members there could ask things like “I want to talk to someone about patent law as a career” or “Can you connect me to an EA who has thought about the decision to have a child”. The group members would either offer to talk themselves or select the best person to talk to outside the group. This is simply a way of making it easier to get people to connect people to other people. This mechanism isn't working very well for use because we are so widely distributed. I’ve offered this connection service before and the demand hasn’t been huge, but the connections made seem quite useful.

This would have various advantages over existing approches:

• Projects on a separate website get less traffic than facebook, which everyone already uses.
• Existing groups are clearly not being used to facilitate conversations (although they could!). Especially not by the kinds of people I would like to get more connected. I have my doubts that these groups will be used for the purpose in question, but am happy to be proved wrong. Many people seem to need a space where it is explicitly encouraged to ask to talk to strangers over Skype in order for them to actually feel safe doing it. The group wouldn’t need to have many members: It is enough if the members collectively know most of the movement so they can set up the person who wants talk with the right conversation partner.
• If this fails, it’s a cheap experiment. It might also help us learn about the pitfalls and the kinds of needs out there to find better ways of accommodating them.
• I think it’s more promising to have people connect people to other people. Approaches of the type ‘everyone lists their skills’ rely on everyone actually filling everything in. They require you to update continuously. They don’t help you find the best person when there are multiple candidates. Real people can do all that and even have a sense of who has time and who doesn’t.

Drawbacks:

• Some people find it annoying to have more facebook groups. As someone who is not annoyed I’m currently unsure how much more annoying that would be than having fewer with more going on, so I wonder what others think. A counter point would be that only the people who want to be involved in this group need to be.
• People who are not as well-connected may still be unaware of the group or hesitant to post there.
• I ran an experiment where I offered to find people conversation partners about their topic in question and it didn’t get that many requests.
• It might just end up not being used like other attempts.
• Issues I forgot?

Data points:

• More well-connected EAs I’ve talked to seem to be in favor of using existing venues while new people have been excited to have a ‘safe space’ where it’s encouraged to ask for a connection.

We could definitely use more human-to-human connection in the EA community!

I think some of the posts here assume that people who are new to EA will reach out to local EA groups or ask to be connected to people. I think that most people are kind of shy.

It's better if we can create a system that pulls people in, rather than waiting for them to reach out. 80,000 Hours used to have this kind of setup -- you reached out for career advice, and then we would try to get you on Skype to connect socially and introduce you to other EA’s (even if they didn't have time to do full coaching). Unfortunately, that funnel doesn’t exist anymore.

However, maybe we could set it up that when people create a new profile/account on some of the EA websites, we can have a volunteer team reach out to them and connect them to people in the same area or field of interest. I call it the EA Welcoming Committee.

Thoughts?