Thanks a lot for making this happen! This is such an amazing way to make AIS knowledge and networks more accessible for people far from the established hubs and without the financial means to visit them. And at the same time, it also supports spreading the work of the SPAR mentees and helps them with their next steps.
Hey Julia, Thank you so much for doing this write-up, it's really valuable. I just sent you a DM through the Forum because my organisation could be interested in contracting you for a short-term interviewer role, as part of our impact assessment. I'm just putting it out here because I'm not sure how effective message notifications are on the Forum :) Plus, I might inspire/encourage others who were considering something similar when seeing good work on these platforms :)
Excellent considerations! One of the reasons I assumed more senior people would not want to talk with more junior ones is because you keep hearing that AIS is mentor-constrained. However, your description made me update more towards the potential high value of these low-friction, "small social overhead" networking opportunities. Thanks a lot for the insights!
Those seem like great practices and I'm happy people actually applied them! (E.g. I've experienced people not leaving sessions despite encouragement if there were no role models to model because it goes so much against social norms. This was the case of high school and university students, maybe more senior people are better at this :) )
Question number 2: Did you have any processes in place to keep the epistemic standards/content quality high? If so, what were those? Or were these concerns implemented in the selection process itself (if there was any)?
I've heard at least from one AIS expert (researcher & field-builder) that they were concerned about a lot of new low-quality AIS research emerging in the field, creating more "noise".
Even if that is not a concern, one can risk distracting people from pursuing high-impact research paths if persuasive lower-quality ones are presented (and there is an added social pressure/dynamics at play).*
From your results, it seems like this was not the case, so I'm very curious to hear the secret recipe to potentially adapt a similar structure :) In theory, I'm all for the unconference format (and other democratic initiatives) but I can't help to worry about the risks related to giving up quality control.
*- I know it can be hard to assess promising vs dead-end directions in AIS.
Such an interesting project! Thank you for organising it and sharing your findings.
The part that I was the most surprised about in that half of the participants were AIS researchers already working in the field. Do you know what their main motivation was behind joining the event? (Also happy to hear it directly from AIS researchers who attended the unconference and happen to see this comment!)
The reason I'm surprised is due to the following assumption about such researchers (simplified and exaggerated for the sake of clarity):
They already are connected to other researchers or can easily connect to them and exchange high-quality ideas e.g. in London (since we are talking about researchers in Europe) -- What motivates them to attend an unconference in Germany instead, especially with a lot of junior people (who might have a lot of terrible/obvious ideas)?
I don't know if this is of any use but I tried to collect free transport and accommodation possibilities & generic help in this Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dhktCZWoHTUYzKGYYk4jPdeUMcuNu-SYXv-TlSHZols/edit#gid=0 Please feel free to add to it and circulate it if you find it useful. Also, please let me know if it can be harmful in ways I haven't thought about!
I am so excited I am about this report. It does such an excellent job at communicating a very complex - and at times confusing - topic such as mental health. I'm at least still struggling when talking to people about mental health and trying to summarize all the important aspects of if so I'm looking forward to sending them to this report and including it in our local career guide for EA Denmark. :)
On a similar note, how does HLI relate to Seligman's well-being concept and PERMA measurement? In Flourish, he argues: "Well-being theory denies that the topic of positive psychology is a real thing; rather the topic is a construct - well-being - which in turn has several measurable elements [PERMA], each a real thing, each contributing to well-being, but none defining well-being (...) By contrast, life satisfaction operationalizes [="defines exhaustively"] happiness in authentic happiness theory [measured by life satisfaction]"
I am aware that life-satisfaction is currently a more realistic thing to incorporate as a measurement into intervention and that PERMA is covered in the Positive Education paper. Thank you very much in advance!
And thank you for the transparency regarding HLI's work both when it comes to research and organisational strategy. I found them highly useful for my own work and aspirations.
Finally, a slightly random question: Which part of Layard's book did HLI contribute to? I just finished it a month ago. :)
Interesting concept with the screen-sharing. The alternative I know is to share your video – that in itself can be motivating for people even if they technically could be doing other things. However, I’m mainly used to co-working that integrates the daily goal setting technique, and even expands it so you set a goal before each session (if you do it pomodoro style) and check-in in the breaks about whether you reached your goal or not + get feedback/support from others if you are stuck. In that way, it will soon become very clear if one was just browsing on youtube instead of working 😊 Another tool that supports co-working is Complice: you can share videos, set your goals and sub-goals and it has a Pomodoro timer (that one can adjust for the room). It only has text chat option though and not video chat. Technically you have to pay for certain features but for me the free version was enough.
Thanks a lot for making this happen! This is such an amazing way to make AIS knowledge and networks more accessible for people far from the established hubs and without the financial means to visit them. And at the same time, it also supports spreading the work of the SPAR mentees and helps them with their next steps.
Hey Julia,
Thank you so much for doing this write-up, it's really valuable. I just sent you a DM through the Forum because my organisation could be interested in contracting you for a short-term interviewer role, as part of our impact assessment.
I'm just putting it out here because I'm not sure how effective message notifications are on the Forum :) Plus, I might inspire/encourage others who were considering something similar when seeing good work on these platforms :)
Excellent considerations! One of the reasons I assumed more senior people would not want to talk with more junior ones is because you keep hearing that AIS is mentor-constrained. However, your description made me update more towards the potential high value of these low-friction, "small social overhead" networking opportunities. Thanks a lot for the insights!
Those seem like great practices and I'm happy people actually applied them! (E.g. I've experienced people not leaving sessions despite encouragement if there were no role models to model because it goes so much against social norms. This was the case of high school and university students, maybe more senior people are better at this :) )
Question number 2: Did you have any processes in place to keep the epistemic standards/content quality high? If so, what were those? Or were these concerns implemented in the selection process itself (if there was any)?
I've heard at least from one AIS expert (researcher & field-builder) that they were concerned about a lot of new low-quality AIS research emerging in the field, creating more "noise".
Even if that is not a concern, one can risk distracting people from pursuing high-impact research paths if persuasive lower-quality ones are presented (and there is an added social pressure/dynamics at play).*
From your results, it seems like this was not the case, so I'm very curious to hear the secret recipe to potentially adapt a similar structure :) In theory, I'm all for the unconference format (and other democratic initiatives) but I can't help to worry about the risks related to giving up quality control.
*- I know it can be hard to assess promising vs dead-end directions in AIS.
Such an interesting project! Thank you for organising it and sharing your findings.
The part that I was the most surprised about in that half of the participants were AIS researchers already working in the field. Do you know what their main motivation was behind joining the event? (Also happy to hear it directly from AIS researchers who attended the unconference and happen to see this comment!)
The reason I'm surprised is due to the following assumption about such researchers (simplified and exaggerated for the sake of clarity):
They already are connected to other researchers or can easily connect to them and exchange high-quality ideas e.g. in London (since we are talking about researchers in Europe) -- What motivates them to attend an unconference in Germany instead, especially with a lot of junior people (who might have a lot of terrible/obvious ideas)?
I don't know if this is of any use but I tried to collect free transport and accommodation possibilities & generic help in this Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dhktCZWoHTUYzKGYYk4jPdeUMcuNu-SYXv-TlSHZols/edit#gid=0 Please feel free to add to it and circulate it if you find it useful. Also, please let me know if it can be harmful in ways I haven't thought about!
I am so excited I am about this report. It does such an excellent job at communicating a very complex - and at times confusing - topic such as mental health. I'm at least still struggling when talking to people about mental health and trying to summarize all the important aspects of if so I'm looking forward to sending them to this report and including it in our local career guide for EA Denmark. :)
On a similar note, how does HLI relate to Seligman's well-being concept and PERMA measurement? In Flourish, he argues: "Well-being theory denies that the topic of positive psychology is a real thing; rather the topic is a construct - well-being - which in turn has several measurable elements [PERMA], each a real thing, each contributing to well-being, but none defining well-being (...) By contrast, life satisfaction operationalizes [="defines exhaustively"] happiness in authentic happiness theory [measured by life satisfaction]"
I am aware that life-satisfaction is currently a more realistic thing to incorporate as a measurement into intervention and that PERMA is covered in the Positive Education paper.
Thank you very much in advance!
And thank you for the transparency regarding HLI's work both when it comes to research and organisational strategy. I found them highly useful for my own work and aspirations.
Finally, a slightly random question: Which part of Layard's book did HLI contribute to? I just finished it a month ago. :)
Interesting concept with the screen-sharing. The alternative I know is to share your video – that in itself can be motivating for people even if they technically could be doing other things. However, I’m mainly used to co-working that integrates the daily goal setting technique, and even expands it so you set a goal before each session (if you do it pomodoro style) and check-in in the breaks about whether you reached your goal or not + get feedback/support from others if you are stuck. In that way, it will soon become very clear if one was just browsing on youtube instead of working 😊
Another tool that supports co-working is Complice: you can share videos, set your goals and sub-goals and it has a Pomodoro timer (that one can adjust for the room). It only has text chat option though and not video chat. Technically you have to pay for certain features but for me the free version was enough.