Comments
Apply now | EA Global: London (29-31 Oct) | EAGxPrague (3-5 Dec)
2 min read
The EA Global team is excited to announce that applications are now open for the following two events:
Nearly two years have passed since our last in-person conference in Europe, so we absolutely can’t wait to welcome you back to catch up with friends, connect with new people, and discuss the latest thinking in EA.
New to the community?
These events are a good fit for anyone who is putting EA principles into action through their donations, volunteering, or career plans. All community members, new or experienced, are welcome to apply.
EA Global: London will be selecting for highly-engaged members of the community.
EAGxPrague will be more suitable for those who have less experience with effective altruism.
How to attend
You only need to submit one application form in order to attend one (or both) events. To save you time, most of the fields can be pre-populated with your responses from previous applications if you log in at the start.
You’ll need to purchase your ticket for London by 19 September to be eligible for an early-bird ticket at £300. The price will increase to £400 after that.
However, we don’t want anyone to miss the event for financial reasons, so you’ll be able to apply a 25%, 50%, or 75% discount to those prices if you need to. You can also request financial assistance for your travel and accommodation expenses in the application form.
Ticket prices for EAGxPrague will be announced in a few weeks’ time.
Final deadlines for applications
Our COVID policy
We’re keeping a close eye on the COVID situation, but our expert advisors estimate there’s a strong chance the events can go ahead in person. All attendees will need to provide proof of a completed course of COVID-19 vaccinations or a negative test in order to attend. You can read our full COVID protocol here.
Help us spread the word
If you know someone who would enjoy either event, please invite them to apply.
We look forward to receiving your application!
I hope my comment comes across as curious rather than judgemental.
Is this the most effective use of our money? Flying a long distance to go to an in person conference? What if you stayed home and gave the money you would spend on the conference to an effective charity?
Just asking as I get into the whole EA mindset. I spend a lot of money on luxuries that could be better spent on charity. I don't look down on anyone who chooses to spend money to go to this conference. Curious about your thoughts on this.
It's a good question. For some people who have already considered their plans pretty carefully and who don't expect much benefit from meeting others in the community, it might not be worthwhile. Or just people for whom the travel / time costs would be unusually high (personally, I'm in that category this year).
I expect it to be most valuable for people who are considering some kind of change of plan in how they might have impact. Hearing about projects in the community and getting input from other people on your plans could be really valuable, allowing you to have much more impact than by donating the monetary cost of attending the conference.
I realize people who had an unusually good experience are more likely to write posts about a conference, but here are some posts giving a sense of the kinds of value some other people have gotten: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TzmPTBYFHPYbvFbjd/reflections-on-ea-global-london-2019-mrinank-sharma https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mMEzk55R33vvHPgyd/reflections-on-ea-global-from-a-first-time-attendee https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PCQ4i5EK7vZ8pR2tF/why-you-should-consider-going-to-ea-global
One consideration is that EA has attracted a lot of money in recent years, and that investing in EA human capital (e.g. through improved networks, transfer of key knowledge, etc) could be very valuable. (See also this older post on talent constraints vs funding constraints.)
I'd be interested in seeing impact assessments/BOTECs (EDIT: Back of the envelope calculations) anyway, though like you(?) I think it is likely that the time costs are greater than the money costs.
Sorry, what does BOTECs mean?
back of the envelope calculations
I read the link to "Is effective altruism growing? An update on the stock of funding vs. people"
I don't understand this:
Do you mean $46 billion to all effective altruism groups, or the researchers, or what? As it is used in this forum, does EA refer to a particular group that uses this forum, or effective altruism in general?
It is a little more vague than that. It means (at least as I interpret it) something like 'there currently exists $46bn which Ben Todd thinks is quite committed to eventually being spent to improve the world using an EA framework of trying to do the most good'
Most of those assets currently belong to Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Bankman-Fried
Thanks for the info. I had never heard of Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Bankman-Fried. I just read about them on wikipedia. Now it makes more sense.
I think this is a great question to ask.
As it happens, I think it probably is an effective use of money, in short because it's an investment in the human capital of the community, which is probably one of the main bottlenecks to impact at the moment. That's because there's a large amount of money committed to EA compared to the number of people in the community working out the best ways to spend it. It's true that there are global health charities that could absorb a lot more money, but there's interest in finding even more impactful ways to spend money!
ETA: looks like Stefan got there slightly quicker with a very similar answer!
Good question! I think it's definitely high impact and will give a couple anecdotes to illustrate it below:
When I was looking back on the last ten years and what were the highest impact mind changes I had in that period of time, around 30% of them came from conversations at EAGs, directly leading to me founding two of the charities I've started.
This isn't counting other benefits, including meeting my best friend of the last 6 years (who introduced me to my romantic partner), and hiring some of my best hires.
A second anecdote, is I remember this question coming up years back and about how it seemed self-serving. If it was truly high impact, then you'd fund the tickets for other people to go. Somebody found this persuasive and funded other people's tickets. Including one person who ended up being one of our best hires and who since went on to start his own charity that is quite high impact.
Of course, hard to tell the counterfactuals, but I think for a lot of these there's a very high chance they wouldn't have happened otherwise.