In short: Personal communication between EAs seems valuable and is not happening nearly as much as it could. Especially for newcomers and people outside hubs and especially face-to-face via Skype or Hangouts. I invite you to share ideas on how to increase communication and actually implement them.
The problem
For newcomers
EA is growing and lots of new people live in areas where the EA presence is not as strong. It's been observed that there’s often a long lag time before new people even communicate with other members of the community - in my case 10 months. Having well-connected EA friends locally seems to help new people get connected quickly. The newcomers I've talked to were all excited to have easier opportunities of connecting to EAs personally. (Peter Hurford has previously written about getting new EAs connected).
For getting information
Another area where lack of communication decreases our efficiency is sharing information. To give an example: A friend of mine was interested in patent law. She had to do her own research and likely missed some information. Another friend of mine works in patent law and would be happy to talk. They don't live in the same country, but have EA friends in common who could set them up. But they would never end up talking to each other because our information economy is inefficient. 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.
The opportunity
If you don’t live in a hub, you only very rarely get to personally talk to EAs who are knowledgeable about a specific topic you’re interested in. However, having conversations via Skype and Hangouts can be very insightful and motivating: They have changed e.g. my next career move, my major and motivated me to join volunteer projects which I didn’t even know existed. These are extremely high gains for little time investment. Other EAs report that personal communication is more effective than written exchanged at getting them to actually implement ideas or act on advice.
Seeing how widely distributed we are geographically, Skype and Hangouts seem plausibly like a channel where we could increase communication a lot.
Ideas?
So in this thread I invite you to share your ideas on how to increase communication between EAs. Since we’re great at coming up with ideas and not implementing them, I also invite you to: 1) Just look into and implement your own idea and see what happens 2) Comment on other people’s idea and say that you would like to work on it (or look into it) with them. Then get in personal contact. As mentioned above, the last part is crucial for actually getting things done.
If you don’t have the time to implement anything, don’t feel discouraged from posting your thoughts, there’s no obligation. If you’re one of the people who haven’t been in contact with EAs much, implementing such an idea is a great way to get exposure.
Let me know if any work gets done as a result of this post.
Existing systems
We have some systems in place. They aren’t solving the problem right now (mostly they’re not used as much), but I’m mentioning them to increase their use and encourage improvements.
- The EA buddy system exists, but isn’t working quite that well. Suggestions welcome!
- The .impact volunteer workforce owns a bunch of chatrooms which are open to anyone. They get a lot of activity on Sundays when .impact holds its workathons, but people occasionally hang out there at other times to answer questions or connect you to someone. .Impact also has weekly hangouts to do EA work together.
- Offer your skills or get advice from someone on Skillshare.im.
- Of the people who join the main EA facebook group some will be greeted by an admin.
- The EA Hub has an offers section which is currently not yet searchable. I suggest searching for the area of expertise like this and then contacting that person. If the area is listed under "What can you bring to the effective altruism community" it's probably safe to contact them. Works sometimes.
I'm guessing you're based in Europe.
Most of the project leaders for .impact, like Ozzie Gooen, Tom Ash, Patrick Brinich-Langlois, Giles Edkins, and Peter Hurford are based in North America. So, it would be a challenge for them to organize a Hangout workathon that is friendlier to Eurasian timezones. However, the .impact team won't be adverse to a second regular Hangout workathon. Each of us becomes part of the .impact team when we take the lead a new project. Contact Ozzie Gooen or Peter Hurford to let them know you want to start a second regular workathon for Europeans, if that's something you'd want to do.
This is easier in continental Europe because everything is so much closer together than on other continents. I don't think having people from different countries come together is very feasible outside of continental Europe. I'll help brainstorm some nexuses where people from nearby cities can come together for coworking weeknds or camps, though, using the global map of EA groups:
Pacific Northwest Weekends/Camps: This would be between Vancouver, Canada, and Seattle, Washington, United States. They're in different countries, but both along the border, and also only three hours drive away from each other. It won't be a co-working weekend, but I'm trying to organize a gathering of effective altruists from both these cities. In the future, I'll try bringing in effective altruists from Portland, Oregon for this as well, in which case we'd most likely all meet in the central location of Seattle.
San Franscisco Weekends/Camps: This would be for effective altruists from Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco, where there already are lots of effective altruists. A camp for all of California would likely take place in Berkeley or SF.
South Bay Area Weekends: This would be for effective altruists who are closer to the heart of Silicon Valley than the northern side of San Francisco Bay, where San Francisco is. This would include effective altruists living in Mountain View or San Jose, likely because they work at a nearby company such as Google or Facebook. I believe there is a sufficient number of effective altruists in the South Bay Areato justify separate meetups than just going to the San Francisco one(s), which might actually take a few hours' drive to get to, rather than ~1 hour. They could do camps in the North Bay (see San Francisco)
New Mexico; Texas; Oklahoma Weekends: Apparently each of these states has multiple effective altruism meetups. I don't know how many effective altruists each of these states are home to, but it could be sufficient to justify a whole weekend or camp gathering. These states are sufficiently far apart I doubt doing an interstate gathering for only one weekend would justify the time expenditure of traveling between the states. Camps would likely take place in Arizona or Texas
Midwest Weekends: Between Wisconsin and Illinois (Chicago), I know Ben West, Peter Hurford, and Gina Stuessy organize Midwest meetups. I don't if these include members of the Michigan (Detroit) and Ohio meetups. One or two hubs for coworking meetups could likely be organized here. I'm guessing the bigger the meetup, the more likely it is efforts would be made to accommodate members from all four states with meetups in the midwest.
East Coast Weekends/Camps: So, this is nearby Washington, D.C. The meetup organization there is pretty solid. They already did coworking weekends to the point they founded and received funding for EA Policy Analytics. There are nearby (enough) meetups in Virginia and Maryland if they wanted to hold some sort of EA camp. A smaller coworking weekend could justify being centered in Virginia to accommodate effective altruists from Virginia and North Carolina.
Pennsylvania Weekends: Pennsylvania has four EA meetups. That's likely enough to justify it's own coworking weekend. If there was some kind of camp they could make the trip up to Boston or New York (see Boston; New York).
New York Weekends/Camps: Effective altruists all the way from Pennsylvania to Conneticuit could come together for a coworking weekend or camp. I figure there's enough effective altruists in New York to justify coworking weekends even if other states aren't included. Camps in New York might be difficult, so it might make sense for everyone to go to Boston.
Northeast Weekends/Camps: Between the student clubs at Harvard and Yale, the substantial number of effective altruists in Boston proper, and the few other surrouding meetups, coworking meetups could be organized here. Boston might be the best nexus to host some kind of camp on the eastern seaboard as well.
Eastern Canada Weekends: Coworking weekends could be hosted for the effective altruists in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa. Bigger meetups like this for the rationalist communities in these cities have taken place in the past. Effective altruists from eastern Canada could likely make their way to a camp in New York or Chicago easily enough (see New York; Midwest).
Group together nearby locations and choose a nexus for them as needed based on the scale and ambition of whatever EA gathering one is planning. Boston might work best for effective altruists from the Northeast and the Midwest coming together. New York or Boston would likely work best for effective altruists from the entire east coast to come together. San Francisco would work best for all effective altruists on the west coast to come together. Brainstorming for other continents continued in next comment.
Brazil Weekends/Camps: Coworking weekends or camps could be hosted in Sao Paulo, and the efffective altruists from Buenos Aires, Argentina could go as well if they could afford it. These would most likely be organized by IEFHR.
Mexico Weekends/Camps: Apparently there are three effective altruist meetups in Mexico. I hadn't ever heard about that before I checked the map today, so I'm guessing there relatively new. They may have enough members among the three meetups in Mexico to justify a coworking weekend; camp seems less likely. I would've included them