I think she adds a useful perspective, but maybe it could undermine her reporting?

The one attendee that seems a bit strange is Kelsey Piper. She’s doing great work at Future Perfect, but something feels a bit off about involving a current journalist in the key decision making. I guess I feel that the relationship should be slightly more arms-length?

Strangely enough, I’d feel differently about a blogger, which may seem inconsistent, but society’s expectations about the responsibilities of a blogger are quite different.

Someone needs to be doing mass outreach about AI Safety to techies in the Bay Area.

I'm generally more of a fan of niche outreach over mass outreach, but Bay Area tech culture influences how AI is developed. If SB 1047 is defeated, I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of such outreach ended up being a decisive factor.

There's now enough prominent supporters of AI Safety and AI is hot enough that public lectures or debates could draw a big crowd. Even though a lot of people have been exposed to these ideas before, there's something about in-person events that make ideas seem real.

I expect that they were hoping for this referral program to receive much more referrals than it's receiving?

I suspect it varies by cause area. In AI Safety, the pool of people who can do useful research is smaller than the pool of people who could do good ops work (which is more likely to involve EA’s who prefer a different cause area, but are happy to just have an EA ops job).

Only so many good short names though.

The PA idea is interesting.

My point was that working four days and volunteering one day, instead of donating, may be more effective for most people.

I guess I want CEA to focus very heavily on figuring out their overall strategy, including community engagement and then communicating their overall decisions.

Conference cost breakdowns feels like an unnecessary distraction at this point, so long as they satisfy the auditor.

In CEA's case in particular, it doesn't seem like they deal with biohazards or AI safety at a level necessitating high security

Agreed.

Regarding some of the specific points you've made:

• I agree that it would be great to get the community more involved in thinking through what the forum should look like.
• Wytham Abbey was an independently run project that they just fiscally sponsored.
• I agree that funding sources should be public (although perhaps not individual donations below a certain amount).
• Unsurprised PELTIV backfired.
• I would love to see regular community office hours, though if these end up seeing low demand, or it's just the same folks over and over, I think it would be reasonable for them to decide to discontinue this.

Regarding some of the other things, I honestly don't see them as the highest priority, especially right now.