Almost 900 people joined the EAGxVirtual conference this weekend from all over the world. And for many of them, it's their first EA conference. We are encouraging attendees to post here if they learn something useful, change their plans, have a really good meeting, etc. It can inspire others and help you reflect on personal experiences. See this post for ideas.
These updates can be very short. But you might also want to talk about people, organizations, or resources that were useful to you. Someone might have been counterfactually responsible for some of your progress and not even know it!
Looking forward to hearing your stories from the conference!
I had a great overall experience at the conference. As a speaker, everything went smoothly for me. The organizers were great and I would definitely recommend them for future events. I would also recommend people attend future EAGxVirtual events.
It's important to emphasize the overall value of remove events. Advantages include reduced greenhouse gas emissions (especially from air travel), lower cost, less time intensive, less time away from family, COVID-safe, no travel visa required (facilitates geographic diversity), and more. I talk about this in my recent Forum post on climate change.
At EAGxVirtual, the geographic diversity struck me as being very good and substantially better than what I recall from in-person EAG events. At one point, I had a great conversation with people from Moscow, Australia, India, Tanzania, & a student in Costa Rica. It's hard to do that at an in-person conference.
Of note, that conversation was spontaneous, with people just walking up in the Gather. Maybe they thought to approach me because they knew I was speaking on Ukraine & nuclear war. But this is why we have conferences - to bring people together with similar interests and give them a chance to interact.
I also had a few good one-on-ones, mostly facilitated by the SwapCard.
A few from me!
Hi all. Attending my first EA conference at EAGx virtual was an amazing experience. Thank you to all the organizers and contributors :)
Value add:
The EA forum introductory workshop has been very encouraging, I might actually write my own first post.
For accountability reasons, it is gonna be something like "Coming back to EA after 6 years" :-)
Personal progress update regarding the cause priority of alternative proteins (resulted from GHI talk):
Question: Is it worth the EA Community trying to accelerate the growth of alt protein production, or should we just allow market forces to move it forward? What are the neglected areas of the alt protein landscape that an EA should get involved instead of purely profit-motivated agents?
Answer: GFI thinks the market will not solve these problems on its own. A particular case of this seems to be fundamental scientific research, where markets need better products, but are not willing to invest in the research themselves.
Update: I initially thought profit-motivated agents would be sufficient to accelerate the growth of alt protein production, but I now doubt that stance, and realize that there likely are neglected areas within alt protein where EAs can have a high marginal impact.
As an organiser, I am constantly amazed at how helpful everyone has been. Thank you to all the volunteers, speakers and attendees who have been so willing to contribute! I love this community <3
First time attending EAGx. Really glad I read the guidance before, mostly for the advice to focus on booking 121 meetings with other attendees. I was hoping to gain a bit more insight into what it's like working in operations within EA and was also looking to get some practical advice on making a career move.
I sent 121 invites to a number of people with operations roles and was amazed at how many responses I got back (I was unable to offer much value to any of the people I'd asked to meet). I'm not exaggerating when I say I got more value from each individual meeting than I had expected to get out of all the meetings put together.
Some of the tips I was given by people currently in ops roles at EA orgs:
This list is by no means exhaustive of the advice and support I was given by a bunch of wonderful EAs over the conference, but it gives a few practical suggestions to others like me.
Thank you to the organisers and speakers, and thank you to all who agreed to meet with me!
I had a grEAt time!
Ander Morgan
Super late to this, but still (probably) worth adding a few thoughts I think, as they don't seem to be present in the below.
All in all, it was a really cool experience, and I was really grateful for EA for putting this on, and creating the space to try to bring us more together. Just got into EAGx Berkely and am excited to see how an in person is relative to the virtual format, will possibly update this post with thoughts on that afterwards.
As a short preface - I was very positively surprised by the quality of the sessions. I will most definitely join more (virtual) EA conferences in the future.
Here are just a few things I take away from the conference:
Charity Entrepreneurship
Founding an EA aligned start-up has been on my mind for a while now but it was all very vague and I was not sure, if I would a good fit for that particular branch of altruism.
Steve Thompson's talk "How and Why You Should Start a High-Impact Nonprofit" was inspiring in that regard. He made the point that it is is generally hard to know your fit before trying it. Charity Entrepreneurship's application process, however, is quite good at judging the fit and the program provides feedback on applications.
Long story short - I took the time to apply last night and am looking forward to hearing from them. Have a look at their website and their short quiz to find out if it could be something for you too.
Better Writing
Shakeel's Session "How to Write Well" gave me some additional ideas on how to get better at (surprise) writing. If I had to quote one (very basic) thing it would be "Don't use a long word, when you could use a short one"
I'd recommend watching the session as VOD.
I also got a lot out of the Charity Entrepreneurship talk. Lead to me applying and also doing a 1-1 with Steve. This talk changed my thinking about what to do with my carrier!
I heard an amazing comment in the live chat of the 'Will AI be an Existential Risk: An Intro to AI Safety Risk Arguments' talk. (note this is from memory so not an actual quote)
I found this a profound statement, I wonder if the bucket of Human-AI Alignment was to expand to include the most tractable topics/causes in Human-Agent Alignment, what might emerge that could have otherwise been missed.
Hi there! Is there any way to still tune in/watch some part of the conference later if I've missed the sign-up deadline?
Hi Mischi, all the talks, workshops, and fireside chats will be available on CEA's YouTube channel next week.
Update: all the talks from the conference are now available in this playlist.