I think this point teases out my underlying issue with the forum
If this event was a coordination forum for meta EA individuals, then it would be reasonable for the vast majority of the attendees to be people who do EA meta work
If, as I thought + think is more useful, this is a coordination forum on meta EA issues, then this is not a good composition of people.
On this:
The original event aim definitely sounds much more like the latter
I think even if the event claims to be the former (whch I think would be a retrospective change in the stated outcome of the event), the nature of the people and orgs attending mean that some aspects of the latter would have been discussed/worked through; because of this, I think my original points largely stands
For me, and as someone who is involved in object level EA work for many years, this event and its main takeaways are quite underwhelming:
It seems like the vast majority of the people who attended the conference do meta EA work and/or work at a large EA org (e.g. OP, GWWC, CEA). this seems like a massive skew, and a lot of the impact that the movement generates comes from people doing object level work e.g. working at an impactful GH charity, doing biosecurity policy work. Therefore, it should follow that they would be represented more proprtionally at the MCF.
The goals of the meeting seem quite underambitious, and its outcomes underwhelming as a result. Goals of improved understanding of focus areas, relationships and motivation and morale for a small group of people seems like an extended "pep talk" for EA leaders rather than a more thorough investigation of more fundamental questions- I must profess that I dont have a great list of what those should be, but it would feel like strategic questions about where EA sees its marginal values/its strategy with outreach and funding etc.
It seems like the people invited and its agenda were largely done without consulting the rest of the community; I understand that this is hard, but why didn't you ask the forum what are pressing questions that they think the MCF should try and work together on? This seems like a really obvious thing to do.
As a largely side note, the self-reported data on how people found the MCF/its NPS seems a largely useless metric of success. As with the design of any scientific study, you should have set out clear, objective (where possible) outcomes on which you would measure success before and measure those afterwards.
With the utmost respect to the CEA community health team, I think that they are, in their current form, largely unable to sufficiently manage significant parts of their community health, especially issues around sexual harassment.
From what I can see from the CEA website, other than Julia Wise, nobody in the team has been trained and worked in mental health, psychology or social work. Moreover, it is not clear that anyone in the team has worked in, or has experience in, managing sexual harrassment or trauma-based counselling. Given that the movement is relatively large and growing, and given that concerns in this area were known before, why has this not been prioritised?
Even having a trained professional as a contractor would be a relatively low-cost way to appropriately support community health, especially pertaining to sexual harassment.
I think this point teases out my underlying issue with the forum
On this:
For me, and as someone who is involved in object level EA work for many years, this event and its main takeaways are quite underwhelming:
With the utmost respect to the CEA community health team, I think that they are, in their current form, largely unable to sufficiently manage significant parts of their community health, especially issues around sexual harassment.
From what I can see from the CEA website, other than Julia Wise, nobody in the team has been trained and worked in mental health, psychology or social work. Moreover, it is not clear that anyone in the team has worked in, or has experience in, managing sexual harrassment or trauma-based counselling. Given that the movement is relatively large and growing, and given that concerns in this area were known before, why has this not been prioritised?
Even having a trained professional as a contractor would be a relatively low-cost way to appropriately support community health, especially pertaining to sexual harassment.