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?