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Among the local group activities, the reading circle can have a very good cost-benefit ratio, especially for small or starting groups with low amount of organizers. It’s rather easy to organize, personally fulfilling, and allows participants to learn quite deeply. I organized EA Jyväskylä for a year, and here are the 5 + 1 steps I used to run the reading circle.
1. Gather a group of people, e.g. your friends and acquaintances. Three participants is a good start and the number may grow along the way. We had a policy that new people can join any session, even if they haven’t read the materials, but are interested in the topic. A group chat makes communication quite easy.
2. Decide on a book (or article collection) and consider how to get enough copies for the participants. Here effectivealtruism.org – impactbooks are some books that are in the core of EA and participants can order themselves a free copy through the Effective Altruism website. To decide, you can make a poll in a chat, but remember to put a deadline for it and use non-anonymous voting, so you know when and who to ask for the missing opinions. Discussion about the books probably improves the decision-making.
(You can decide on the book before collecting people to the group, do it at the same time, or do it after the group has formed.)
3. Decide on a date and place. Book it if needed. We met in cafes and bars close to the participants' homes, so there was no need to book the place beforehand. (Though sometimes we had to reschedule because of the Bingo event in the bar.) Schools or libraries may also offer spaces for these kinds of meetings. We had 90 minute meetings. It’s easier to organize, if the time and space stays constant, but we customized each meeting date to suit the group members' calendars.
4. Decide how much you read for each meeting. We did about 50 pages (1-2 chapters) every week and met nearly every week.
5. The meeting started with a check-in round where each person had their turn to tell how they are.
Then we listed topics that interested us in the week’s readings. Try to keep the listing phase short!
After the listing we discussed each topic more deeply. It’s good if there’s a certain person taking care of the list and time.
In the end, we had a round where everyone shared their key takeaways.
Then we decided about the next meeting.
+1 Pro tip: The start may require some decisiveness from you, but in the long-run, aim to give the participants power to decide and have their say. Share knowledge that’s needed for organizing. Ask them to take responsibilities. It will make your group more resilient and allow it to exist and perform even if you can’t join.
