Simon Holm
Bio
Participation5
Hi! Simon here from Stockholm, Sweden - math graduate, semi-professional musical theatre performer, and indecisive generalist.
I am currently exploring personal fit to find out how I can make a sustainable social impact - right now, I am working as a consultant in information risk management.
I have previously worked with university group support (about which you can read more here) and operations at EA Sweden and Ge Effektivt, and am in contact with the local community in Stockholm. I have also undergone facilitator training for CEA's virtual programs, although I currently haven't facilitated any cohorts other than those during my EAS employment.
I want to learn more about the role of arts in society, rationality, complex systems and applied category theory, economics, machine learning, cybersecurity, community and norm engineering!
Feel free to reach out to me on Facebook, LinkedIn, or send me an email at simon.holmm97@gmail.com if something here sparks your interest!
How others can help me
I would love to hear how you reason around the role EA plays in your life. I would also be keen on hearing a recommendation of your current favorite book or unconventional opinion!
How I can help others
I am in general happy to discuss any deliberations you have on personal decisions, including career or be a welcoming face if you are new to the movement and have uncertainties you'd like to brief with someone.
I have some skills in the below areas and could share my experiences:
*Writing (research summaries, editing, proofreading, interviewing)
*Teaching/Group moderation/Discussion facilitation
*Entertainment (song-writing, singing, dancing, acting)
Posts 4
Comments14
I would be super-keen on reading more essays exploring friendship from a well-being/making-the-world-a-better-place point-of-view, and I do think there is something to say there with regards to community building, too!
In any case, I found this post to be a thoughtful reminder for my personal goals with regards to relationships. And thanks for making me laugh! Not something I expect from an ordinary Tuesday evening *hat off*.
Thanks for writing this post! I would love to see how elements of what is reported here could potentially improve CEA's virtual introductory program and be more discussed among/taught to community builders on a consistent basis. I look forward to digesting these topics more properly to see how it can benefit the work I do as university group supporter.
For the sake of using the handbook for an intro fellowship - where is the "earlier estimate of your future income" located, if anywhere, in the handbook? Does it refer to some exercise or to a graph in one of the articles on economic inequality? And if there is no such thing, perhaps an alternative phrasing or including the estimate in the exercise would be great!
I really like this point, and it sparks a few questions, confusions and thoughts I have about community building, some of which are:
(1) I believe what you are pointing at can be a good distinction between the tasks of national/regional groups vs. local groups at universities and in cities - the more local groups catering towards creating a healthy community (for example through the activities you suggested), and the bigger groups catering towards helping/"making sure" the community serves humanity in addition to itself.
(2) What do we actually mean with community building and what is the difference between a community building and movement building (and is one of them preferred)?
(3) Is what you're bringing up an example of Goodhart's law (this question may say more about my understanding of the law than about community building)?
(4) (related to above points) I wonder if we weigh the intrinsic value of (the) EA community(s) too little, compared to its/their instrumental value, much like treating rest as a means to be, say, more productive, will make it harder to get proper rest (not sure if this is an actual thing, but I'm pretty sure there's a named concept for it which I have forgotten), and also missing out on the intrinsic value, of course! Making the community healthy would be, I guess, more of catering to the community for the community's sake, whilst also (probably) making it more likely for it/its members to have a greater impact.
Perhaps some of these points have already been adressed in previous posts on community building - would love to get tips on this!
I hope this doesn't interfere with the intent of your post; I really felt like sharing my associations! Please let me know if anything was irrelevant. Would love to hear if you have any thoughts on mine.
It absolutely depends on particular circumstances!
I realise now that my current impression of GPR is that it really is its own field, i.e. that you would not spending much time dipping your toes into specific (other) cause areas. See more here: https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/research-agenda-web-version/
But it would be more useful to talk to someone who works with it to find out more, for sure!
If you view the forum from a UX lens and put it in the context of different categories of online community infrastructures (e.g. Facebook/Twitter feed of short posts, Discord/Slack channel-based, Quora/StackExchange/Reddit upvote/question-based and more traditional forums with defined categories/aubcategories and threads), what do you think are the pros and cons of how the Forum is currently structured and how does that facilitate (or not facilitate) what you would like to see happen in online EA community building? Would also be curious to hear how you would compare the Forum to that of the many existing EA Slack channels.