Sasha Berezhnoi 🔸

Community Director @ Effective Altruism Anywhere
1286 karmaJoined Working (6-15 years)New York, NY, USA

Bio

Participation
5

I run EA Anywhere, a virtual group for people who don't have local groups nearby.

I co-founded EA Russia and have been involved in community building for the last three years. I contributed to several EA organizations as a research intern, created a Youtube channel with EA-related videos, and studied the MIT Micromasters program on global health and development policy.

I'd be happy to chat about EA or introduce you to the EA Anywhere group:

https://calendly.com/sashaberezhnoi

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-berezhnoi/

Comments
41

You are right, EA Software Engineers group is no longer active. Their virtual events were quite useful, and you can still access the recordings and slides here.

EA Data Science group hosts events sometimes, and their channel on EA Anywhere Slack is pretty active.

Making EAGxVirtual more accessible has been our aspiration since 2022, and I'm excited we reached a new milestone with the public livestream!

Despite the common advice to "focus on 1-1s, you can always watch talk recordings later", I found most people (including myself!) only watch talks if they attend them live. And the virtual conference allows us to invite speakers from anywhere in the world who wouldn't be able to present at in-person EAGx.

Here are some sessions I'm personally excited about:

You can access recordings of past talks and explore the agenda here.

Opportunity for creatives in EA: 

Arts for the Future Festival (September 13-29) is an artist-led, global hybrid festival, online and in-person in New York, leading up to and beyond the UN Summit of the Future. It's a great chance to show your work and connect with other artists.

How you can participate:

  • Curate a virtual or in-person event (e.g. a film screening, poetry jam, guided tour, workshop, photography exhibition, etc).
  • Submit your artwork for the Open Call (by September 12th). Selected artworks will be featured in a virtual gallery and in Times Square.
  • Collaborate and connect with other artists.

I'm a big fan of long-term art projects and it would be exciting to see artworks reflecting on long-term thinking, care for future generations, etc. The festival is hosted by Lisa Russell, an Emmy-award-winning filmmaker with a passion for promoting artist representation in global policymaking spaces.

Hey Jamie, yes, it is. We have 500+ weekly active members. I see that you have an existing account with "jamie.a.harris94 [at] gmail [dot] com", you can try to log in using it. Otherwise, just DM me your preferred email and I will send an invitation link.

Have you used any ads to promote these videos? For me as a viewer, it's always suspicious to see a large number of views with very little engagement (for AI video: 1.1M views, 500 likes, 50 comments). I'd suggest relying more on organic growth in the future, it will give the videos more credibility in the eyes of viewers.

Hi Elliot, we listed the organizations on the career fair's page on Swapcard. Keep in mind that some orgs are hosting office hours during the weekend but are not represented at the career fair and vice versa.

Hi Michael,

Here are some quick thoughts:

  • Make sure to block some time for attendees to reflect on their conference goals & planning. We are hosting a workshop on Friday to encourage this type of reflection ("First-timers at EAGx", at 3 pm UTC). You can also use our planning worksheet.
  • Group activities like watching talks together, in-person 1-1s, and shared lunch seem like good ideas!
  • It is better if space for 1-1s isn't packed very tight. It can be distracting when lots of people speaking around. And if two people are attending the same meetup or office hours they will hear each other speaking both in their headphones and in the room.

We've already heard about multiple groups from different countries planning such co-attending sessions, it's exciting! I think it's especially valuable in regions with a lack of reliable infrastructure (e.g. where home internet is not reliable but it's possible to book a room at a local university or coworking with fiber internet).

No, there is no cap. I definitely encourage you to apply! Based on previous EAGxVirtual events, we are expecting 1,000 - 1,500 participants. 

I'm very excited about organizing this event! You can find a sidenote on my personal experience with EAGxVitual in last year's announcement. During the recent career conversations week it became even more clear to me how pivotal the EAGxVirtual 2020 was for my life and career. It helped me to find a mentor, with whom we ended up working for 6 months, and to identify the next steps to test my career fit in multiple areas - community building, research, and charity entrepreneurship. I never thought spending a weekend in front of a laptop could have such huge pay-offs, haha!

If you have any questions or suggestions, please, leave a message here or contact us at virtual@eaglobalx.org 

I really like these themed events on the EA Forum and would love to see more of them! Thanks to everyone who contributes with posts, quick takes, and comments.

We scheduled related online discussions at EA Anywhere to facilitate knowledge-sharing and highlight useful career-related actions. Everyone is welcome to join!

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