Local Groups Should Consider Running More In-Depth Workshops

Posting this here to have a place to link to where I outline my thinking about why in-depth EA-related workshops are particularly good events, without having much hard evidence for that claim. I’m open to being convinced otherwise, and happy about comments.

There are different types of events local groups can integrate into their programming. Some examples:

• Small events (often 1-3h in length, can e.g. happen during a weekday evening):
  • Socials
  • Talks
  • Discussions (including reading circles, fellowships etc.)
  • Short workshops
• Larger events (often happening on weekends):
  • Retreats
  • In-depth workshops

My impression is that socials, talks and discussions are pretty much standard for the majority of groups. As for larger events, retreats are pretty popular, and have been discussed extensively on the EA forum. Most of the local groups I’ve interacted with have run one or multiple retreats, be it a small one for the core of their group only, or a larger one to get together EAs from a wider area. What I’ve personally seen considerably less of is workshops, and particularly larger workshops that take a whole day or two. In this post I’d like to outline why such in-depth workshops may be very valuable events, and make the case that they can be much less costly than other large events.

Why EA Workshops Are Valuable

I believe that in-depth workshops have a great cost-benefit ratio, which should make them very attractive to local groups that want to expand their event portfolio without having to invest an excessive amount of effort.

• Some of the benefits:
  • Participants learn new skills
  • Some workshops might yield tangible outcomes
  • It’s a perfect setting to overcome the activation energy required to do some useful things that would otherwise be unlikely to happen. In a workshop setting, the default that almost all participants will live up to is to follow the instructions and do exercises, whereas when people are at home / on their own, their life is often full of distractions and other priorities.
  • Workshops can cause people to commit to impactful future behavior, e.g. start projects or build beneficial habits.
  • Workshops are attractive events for newcomers who might not come to regular socials or discussions.
  • They are also attractive events for EAs from other semi-distant places, who wouldn’t attend smaller events of the hosting local group / organization.
  • You get participants to interact with each other in collaborative problem solving, which happens very rarely during socials, talks or discussions.
• The costs:
  • As opposed to retreats, 1-2 day workshops can work perfectly fine without the organizers having to centrally provide accommodation^[1] to participants, which greatly reduces organizational overhead.
  • The venue for a workshop can be as little as a seminar room (although having access to a small kitchen or at least an additional breakout room is beneficial), or somebody’s flat. University groups can often get seminar rooms for free, which greatly reduces the cost of workshops compared to other larger EA events.
  • A big part of the effort is preparing exercises / slides – but this scales quite well, since the same workshop can be given in multiple places.
• Other notes:
  • Workshops have a tendency to be more “professional” than e.g. retreats, thus circumventing some of the potential risks of such events.

What Does an In-Depth Workshop Look Like?

My image of an in-depth EA workshop is roughly this: something between 5 and 25 people getting together for 1 or 2 days to productively work on or learn something, either to build new skills or to create some tangible outcome, or both. This can often involve some ratio of lecture style teaching, but a non-negligible amount of time should be spent in (often collaborative) exercises. Ideally you achieve a nice mix of learning new things, making actual progress on something impactful, and allowing people to socialize.

The topics covered by a workshop can range from career planning to EA concepts, how to found a charity, epistemics, writing forum posts, how to use some piece of software, personal finance, forecasting, meditation or pretty much anything else. There is of course quite some variation in which workshop topic will be valuable to whom, but at the same time I’d like to point out that quite a few of the benefits of workshops that I’ve outlined above apply independently of how valuable the workshop’s object level contents are for participants. That is not to say that you shouldn’t focus on teaching valuable skills in workshops, but just that this is far from the only path to impact for such events.

Why the Focus on Lower Cost/Effort Compared to Other Large Events Like Retreats?

I considered different ways to frame this post. Of course I want to make the point that in-depth workshops appear somewhat underrated to me. But assuming they are indeed underrated, what are the implications for local groups? Run additional events? Run in-depth workshops instead of shorter events? Run in-depth workshops instead of retreats?

The concrete implications of taking workshops more seriously certainly would differ between groups. Different event types are hard to compare, no less so because they’re almost certainly all pareto-optimal if you just take into consideration enough axes. 

Looking only at the easier to quantify aspects, I would categorize different event types roughly as follows (adding conferences as well, because why not)^[2]:

In other words, in-depth workshops are certainly more effortful than your typical evening event, but potentially quite a bit less effortful than a retreat. 

But how impactful are all these events? My gut feeling is that in-depth workshops, retreats and conferences for a given participating individual are roughly comparable in expected impact. All are likely heavy-tailed, and some participants will benefit much more than others. Smaller events most certainly are less valuable per event, but then again you can have many more of them, and enabling a local group to meet regularly is very valuable in its own right. Ultimately it probably comes down to the mix of any group’s programming. My main point is that in-depth workshops can be a valuable part of that.

Why the Focus on Larger Workshops?

I do believe that shorter workshops – say 2h evening workshops as part of a group’s regular programming – bring many similar benefits as the larger whole-day or even weekend workshops, and can be great events and a welcome alternative to socials and discussions. The reasons I’m still focusing mostly on arguing in favor of these larger events are the following:

• Larger events can motivate EAs from other places to join the event as well, which yields networking benefits that you wouldn’t achieve with a shorter workshop.
• If you invite an expert speaker, they too usually have to travel, which may not be worth it for a very short event.
• Having more time really helps: participants often need to “warm up” and it takes time to engage deeply with a topic. In a 2 hour event you can often only scratch the surface, whereas a well prepared full-day workshop in my experience often ends up being quite memorable.
• If you run an evening event on a weekday, people may be somewhat tired after a long day of work or university. If you run a whole-day workshop on the weekend however, they bring all their energy and attention to that event.

What Does It Take To Run a Workshop?

• A suitable venue, such as a seminar room, ideally with projector / whiteboard / flipchart, or a spacious flat
• A willing speaker or facilitator
  • Note that this doesn’t necessarily have to be an expert on the topic. You can have very fruitful workshops where the facilitator just coordinates a group of people to engage with the topic productively. More expertise on the speaker side is of course beneficial, but a relative lack thereof should in my opinion not stop you from running a workshop. (but of course inform the participants about your level of expertise prior to the event, so they know what to expect)
• Possibly funding for the speaker/facilitator, or venue
• Food and drinks
• A sufficient number of participants
• Good communication before and after the event to ensure everyone is sufficiently prepared (if necessary), finds the venue in time, and sticks to their plans/commitments (if any) after the workshop

As mentioned before, I would claim that centrally providing accommodation for participants is pretty much optional. Ideally you would run the workshop in a city with some EAs that can host guests in their flats/houses, to make it very easy for travelers to stay overnight. As an MVP solution, air mattresses are quite affordable and fit into almost any flat.

I’ve run several in-depth workshops in the past that required 0 funding – which may not be a good metric to optimize for, but can still reduce the requirements for the event to a degree where for some organizers it may make the difference between running an event at all or not.

Conclusion

Workshops are events with a wide variety of unique benefits. A “minimal viable workshop” can be surprisingly easy to organize, by e.g. running it in somebody’s flat with a volunteer speaker. I believe that such workshops are particularly suitable events for small city / university groups that lack the resources to run retreats or are otherwise struggling to host attractive larger events, but they should be part of any local group’s event portfolio.

Thanks a lot to Birte Spekker and Sarah Tegeler for their valuable feedback.

1. ^{^}

   For retreats you usually want people to sleep on-site, in the same place where all the programming happens. You also need to provide several meals for people. This already introduces a lot of constraints and usually leads to significant costs for such events. For workshops however, the accommodation can happen mostly independently and be handled by participants themselves. Ideally EAs living nearby the workshop venue can host a few guests from other cities. Furthermore, people from surrounding cities, who have a commute of e.g. <1h, may not need any accommodation at all.

2. ^{^}

   I’m sure it’s easy to disagree with some of these numbers, and to find examples of cases that exceed the ranges provided; it may well be that my model of some of these event types differs from that of other people, or that my quick Fermi estimates of how much cost & effort goes into different events are off, so of course take this table with a grain of salt.