I'd love for EA Global events to become more conducive to small group conversations. Right now they feel heavily focused on 1:1s. I'd love for it to be easier to book a conversation or find a place to sit with 2-4 people I have a common interest with.

There have been a few discussions recently around how to make EA a more welcoming and safer place for women. Some of these involve discussions around the appropriateness of nonprofessional motivations for swapcard / 1-1s (e.g. using swapcard to solicit romantic relationships, hitting on people at EAGs). The following includes suggestions from discussions with people interested in making EAGs a better space for women.^[1]

Request:

Can we make it very explicit and unambiguous what the EAG + EAGx's event policies are? (apologies if this is already listed somewhere).

Some other possible suggestions:^[2]

• Explicit policy, transparent criteria or examples of what would constitute a breach, and clear potential consequences of various severity of actions are made available up front. 
• A acknowledgement of these policies + consequences as a pre-requisite for attendance (e.g. a "I acknowledge and agree to follow CEA's event policies" checkbox during application form)
• An (optionally anonymous) place to submit complaints, including for immediate action if needed
  • The process should ideally allows those accused (if not anonymous) to present their perspective, though this might be deanonymising for the complainant, so this should be discussed with them.
• Updates to complainants within a pre-specified timeframe
• End of conference survey that explicitly asks about things like behaviour that makes people feel subjectively unwelcome, or experiences that make people think they were being solicited for a nonprofessional purpose. These can be stratified by gender, cause area, age, and experience within EA or number of EAG attendances for both complainants as well as potential perpetrators.
•  Summary statistics, as well as anonymised log of complaints and actions taken, are anonymised and published.

Less directly relevant / more tentative but may interact with the above:

-Clear alcohol policy during EAGs

-An official (but clearly non-endorsed) compilation of post-EAG socials that are open-invite. This serves the less professional + more social functions of EAGs for those who feel like this is an important element of EAG, and makes it easier for newcomers who wish to attend to know what might be happening instead of ad-hoc facebook groups / word of mouth / getting links to google docs from friends, while making it feel less exclusive. (Unsure about the value of this, though some previous EAGs have had slack channels within the official slack that served this purpose)

-Surveying attendees for what norms they'd prefer at EAGs (though this may be subject to selection bias)

1. ^{^}

   Anecdotally this is a very important point of feedback for a subset of attendees, including on whether they feel like EA is the right community for them. Separately, I do think this is a low hanging fruit for the EA community (more tractable than trying to coordinate community group norms), as well as a very important place for the EA as a collective to walk the talk, as a community who supposedly unites under a shared goal of doing good better.

2. ^{^}

   Apologies, haven't put much thought into how much of the following would be actually good in practice, or looked into how much of this already exists. This is a list that covers some areas I think seem important on first principles (clear + transparent processes, accountability, and data collection to allow better decision making in future), and not based on research into existing best practices.

Would love a badge or something that people can put on that says “come talk to me” to indicate that they aren’t currently in a 1-1 / waiting for a 1-1

One thing I'd love to collect — people's favorite resources on how to get the most out of EA Global and other (EA) conferences. The topic page for EA Global (and the one for conferences) already does this a bit, but I'm wondering if people have favorite resources to share or use. 

Off the top of my head (and looking through the topic pages), here are some of my favorites: 

1.  EA Global Tips: Networking with others in mind
2. EA Global meetings can be short :)
3. How to Get the Maximum Value Out of Effective Altruism Conferences
4. How to find good 1-1 conversations at EAGx Virtual
5. The Ultimate Guide to EA Conferences
6. Advice for getting the most out of one-on-ones

I feel like there is a lot of content about getting the most out of an EAG on the forum, but not that much on who should go (again). I understand that this is going to depend a lot on personal circumstances, but I am wondering whether there are any guidelines / tips on who should apply to EAGs? And how many EAGs are too many?  

I have never gone to an EAG and felt I wasted my time, and have always come back with new valuable connections, but obviously going to all EAGs is too much, and you are taking away a spot from someone else who might need it more. Deciding where to draw the line is something I am struggling with a bit. 

Is it possible to include title and organization on name badges (ideally, this would be optional)?

Will preferred names be used on badges and Swapcard? The registration form is a bit confusing as it doesn't display the user's preferred name, so while using the form it's not apparent which name will be used (though I remember this being stated on the application form).