Hi James, I've been working on the EA brand at CEA, and appreciate you raising this! I’ll be at EAG London and would be happy to talk more, if you’re attending and want to book a 1:1 with me then, or we could schedule a call for afterward. It sounds like there’s some cool work being done at EA Netherlands that I’d love to hear more about!
To give some relevant context, until recently (March of this year), I was the only full-time employee working on communications at CEA—which was dramatically insufficient for the work to be done! As Zach mentioned in his Forum post on CEA strategy, we revamped our hiring process and have been working on building out the team. The exciting news is that we’ve made great progress and now have a Communications team of four full-time employees (FTEs)! This also means that we’re still in an early scaling phase, as people onboard to their roles. I share that context to clarify that the lack of more coordinated or in-depth engagement with different stakeholders was an unfortunate side effect of limited capacity and the need to triage my work heavily. We’re still figuring out how to best use our new and growing capacity, but we’re excited about broader community engagement as one of those areas.
A few points of clarification: community builders were surveyed as part of the brand association work that Agnes cites here. I know Agnes conducted lots of user interviews across the community and with people less familiar with EA to inform her work as well. In my role at CEA, I regularly keep in touch with community builders at various levels (city, national, university) and advise people in the EA community on comms strategy and media-related questions. I recognize this engagement can feel spotty in places, and not everyone has visibility into it. I definitely think the Comms team has room for improvement in communicating about our work, and I also want to be clear that we care about and track the perspectives of community builders and others in the community.
This is a nudge to leave questions for Darren Margolias, Executive Director of @Beast Philanthropy, in the AMA post here! I'll be recording a video AMA with Darren based on the questions left in the post, and we'll try to get through as many of them as possible.
For extra context, Beast Philanthropy is a charity founded by YouTuber MrBeast. They recently collaborated with GiveDirectly on this video; you can read more about it on GiveDirectly's blog and the Beast Philanthropy LinkedIn.
Frances' quick take here made me think about what skills are particularly important in my own line of work, communications. 80,000 Hours has a skill profile for communicating ideas that covers some crucial considerations when assessing fit for communications work; these are additional skills or aptitudes that I often think about when considering fit for communications work in the EA ecosystem in particular:
This is by no means a comprehensive list—and some of these relate to points Shakeel already raised—but here’s a list of more wins from 2023, some more meta than others:
Again, these are just some additional wins! I would love to hear from others about the work they appreciated from the past year or wins you’ve seen in your areas of work or interest.
(Edit note, Jan 4: I previously said AMF had already distributed 90 million nets. @tobytrem pointed out they are in fact part way through distributing these nets.)
I can’t say anything much beyond what’s already been said, but want to reiterate the deep gratitude for what you’ve done in this role. I have always felt heard and respected in conversations with you, even before working at CEA, and I appreciate how value-driven and kind you are in your work.
I really respect you making a choice that will be best for your health—while also making a choice on timing that will support the community’s health. Thank you for that thoughtfulness and all you’ve done for the community! Looking forward to seeing you around still.
I appreciate this style of post! I'll also flag that the Global Priorities Insitute has an FAQ-style list of responses to questions about longtermism, some of which link to research papers and further reading for those interested.
Thanks for this, James! No worries at all about tone—I completely understand how those kinds of days go.
I really appreciate you sharing more context about where you’re coming from. It sounds like there may have been some communication gaps or crossed wires here—I know I’ve talked to your co-director Marieke about comms more than once (most recently in February at EAG), and Britney from our team left some comments on one of your comms strategy docs recently that the Groups team flagged to us. But it sounds like there may be a disconnect between those conversations and what you were looking for, or maybe the information didn’t flow in the most helpful ways for your planning, which is great to know.
You also raise a really good point about proactive communication. As I said, we’re definitely still figuring out the best ways to keep stakeholders informed as we scale up our capacity and work, and this is helpful feedback in that.
Looking forward to chatting directly soon!