Online EAGs are underrated (FBB #11)

Crossposted on Substack.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, but EA Connect gave me the final motivational push :)

Many EAs I talk to seem to treat online vs. offline conferences like this:

Online:

• “I will register and listen in for the most interesting talks, but otherwise won’t spend much time at the conference.”
• “I will let people book a call with me, but I won’t actively source 1-1s.”

Offline:

• “I will book as many 1-1s as I can reasonably take (or more) to get the most out of the conference.”

I think this is a mistake. One should take the same approach to virtual conferences as to in-person ones, and slightly tweak their current approach (insofar as it’s similar to the above) to make in-person conferences more serendipitous.

Online conferences that use Swapcard have several advantages over in-person ones:

• You can talk to people who live far away and whom you’d otherwise be unlikely to connect with.
• You can give people your online calendar instead of putting up with Swapcard’s scheduling tool, making meetings lower friction.^[1]
• Rescheduling is easier.
• You can take a larger number of meetings: shorter default durations feel more natural, and it’s easier to end early if there’s less to discuss.
• It’s easier to take care of yourself and relax when calling from home, letting you free up more of your weekend while getting similar benefits.
• Scheduling calls for the following week feels more appropriate than trying to fit everything into the conference window.
• In case you want to attend a talk, you can join later and play it at 1.5x speed, so you can still catch up by the end and ask questions.

Cons of online meetings:

• You don’t get to experience the “vibe” of the person as much, which makes building trust harder, reducing the likelihood of future collaboration.
• Some people might not want to take calls the following week.
• More senior EAs are perhaps less likely to attend unless they are giving a talk.
• Less fun overall (I treat these more like work than in-person ones).
• No awesome afterparty.

When it comes to in-person conferences, I think there is more value in setting aside some "free time" to talk to people more serendipitously. This allows for a larger number of connections per 25 minutes, and it also just happens to be fun. 

See also: Tacit knowledge: how I *exactly* approach EAG(x) conferences

1. ^{^}

   On Swapcard, people often book each other for times that don’t actually work. Clicking “attend” on a talk doesn’t block that slot, and manually updating availability is a pain.