Summary:
If you're new to the EA/AI safety community, and want to get more involved, attend an EAG! Schedule A LOT of 1:1s. Volunteer. Chat with people.
I've only been in the EA community for the past 6 months, but I got the recommendation very early on to try to attend an EAG conference and since I live in Czech Republic and the last one was in London, it was not difficult to make this happen.
Relevant background:
- 17 years technical + events/program management
- 4 BlueDot courses
- 80,000 hours career consultation
- ~ 15 hours of online EA/AI safety related webinars
- many, many, many hours of reading
Primary Goal:
- Arrive with an open mind, using it as an opportunity to learn more about the EA community, its members, organisations and goals
Struggles:
- Everything I read said to focus on 1:1s. This was difficult because I was (am) still uncertain of which concrete direction to aim for in AI safety. (Currently field building and operations). Would people actually talk to me?
- I wanted to volunteer, have 1:1s and attend talks. There weren't enough hours in the day.
Final Results:
- 18 hours volunteering
- 12 1:1s (mixture of people I reached out to vs reached out to me)
- 2 rejected 1:1 requests + 1 no-show
- 1 last-minute cancelled 1:1 due to a family emergency
- 1 hiring manager approached me about a job
- 1 offer for volunteer team lead role at EAG NY and SF
- 0 Satellite events (but not for lack of trying!)
Pros:
Overall, the experience was incredibly positive. It was a little bit bizarre meeting people whose names I had been seeing for months, but most people were very kind and welcoming. I appreciated that the space was welcoming for someone like me who was still trying to figure out where I fit in the community had so many opportunities to discuss career and impact paths. I was able to scratch some ideas right off of my list and also boost some others based on feedback from people active in funding and field-building. I was also pleased to be able to give feedback to people already in the industry, asking me about my experiences and what would have improved it. I loved volunteering and got to meet so many people that way. I've already committed to volunteering in NY and SF and I'm really excited to meet more people there.
Cons:
My only con had to do with satellite events. I was strategic about the satellite events that I applied to, sent my applications in 2 weeks ahead of time and didn't apply to multiple events held at the same time. I applied to 1 event each evening between Thursday and Sunday. They all rejected me. This would have been fine but the rejections were all 2-3 hours before the events, leaving me no time to make alternate plans.
Next steps:
- I've already started reaching out to more people in the field building and operations space to get more perspectives and bounce ideas off of
- Applying to more operations roles and field-building opportunities
- BlueDot Frontier AI Governance course
- I'm going to reach out to potential organisers for satellite events at EAG NY and SF to see if they need an event/program manager to help them organise their calendars for the weeks before and after EAG
What do you think?
- For those of you who are new to the EA space, do you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions?
- What about those of you already in the community? Recommendations for next steps or plans for EAG NY or SF?
