Constance Li
Bio
Participation3
I started out as an animal advocate in 2001 at the age of 12. Nearly a decade later, I discovered effective altruism and decided to start down an earning to give career path as a physician and bootstrapped my own telehealth company. Once I started trying to decide where to donate, I was quite shocked by the limitations of the existing organizations and communities in the EA/Animal space and switched into doing meta-work through co-founding Hive and later founding AI for Animals.
Posts 14
Comments108
Absolutely agreed. One effective approach is to create requirements that provide inherent value and enable community feedback. For instance, ask them to write up their ideas in a public forum post and include an ask about whether others are working on similar projects or would find the work valuable.
This serves as both a filter (if others people respond and say this work wouldn't be useful or someone else is already covering it, then you have a graceful way to say no) and be a useful contribution to the community.
I've tried A and C in the past, and I would say it really depends on what you want to do specifically and what you're well suited for.
A.) There are a lot less competent super connectors in other in large hub cities than you would think. This is not a skill that is taught, and most people who are good networkers are not thinking about the wider ecosystem or what it means to be a responsible steward of the network. I do think that large hubs have a big repository of people who could become great super connectors, though so the potential for a multiplier effect is higher.
B.) It depends on how strategic you think a certain hub can be. Are there a bunch of already value-aligned people there or businesses/industries that could be allies? If so, then it would be worthwhile to start developing that network now, like planting a seed for a tree that will grow in a couple of years.
C.) You need to consider the startup costs for moving. I did this for a year (NYC, Bay Area, London every month or so) and found it quite exhausting. Every time you go to a new place, you have to figure out where to live, where to co-work, and what events to go to. The people that you met the previous time you were there may also be doing very different things, so it's hard to be fully up-to-date on what's going on. If you can do things strategically timed with certain high-value events, then this might be worthwhile. For example, @SofiaBalderson and I tend to go to London (for 1-2 weeks) at the tail end of the Ambitious Impact charity incubation programs that focus on animal welfare charities so we can get to know the new founders well.
You might also be interested in learning about my prior (failed) attempt at establishing a nomad hub.
Glad that it was interesting for op-sy people!
Accommodations: We self booked the airbnbs and had people fill out a form about accommodation preferences (comfort with sleeping in common spaces, sharing rooms with same/opposite gender, light/sound sensitivity). Then we assigned houses to everyone and set up a whatsapp chat for each of the houses to communicate with one another. One person was the designated housing manager who made sure each house had the things it needed and the relevant airbnb checkin/out info was posted to each whatsapp. We didn't charge anything for housing because the ops side of collecting money for each person corresponding to how long they stayed seemed like too much overhead. Instead of reimbursing people for travel support (which many conferences do), we just offered a free registration and spot in the shared accommodations instead, making it much cleaner from an expense tracking perspective.
I'll share the form privately with you via a DM on the forum!
There is a students channel on Hive, which is a community of farmed animal advocates. You could connect there to find various resources and connections.
One that jumps to mind is the student led Food 4 Thought Innovations. They are having a festival in the Harvard for food transformation change next week.
Short video explainer
Thanks Sofia!
Yeah, this is a reason why I love communities like Hive. I can always signpost people towards joining the community or posting on the help request channel first to see if the community can help them. If they are unwilling to take the extra 10 minutes to access a free resource, then yeah, it seems like they're probably unlikely to follow through on whoever I introduce them to as well.