Crosspost; edit: added target group description; announcing closed first application round
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First application round closed:
We closed the first application round on Friday 21st February. Confirmations will be sent on Sunday 22nd.
Very limited space for further participants will be available. Feel free to apply until Friday, February 28th 2020.
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NEAD (Netzwerk für Effektiven Altruismus Deutschland) in collaboration with EA Oxford is excited to announce a weekend workshop with senior biosecurity experts.
In a nutshell
- Weekend workshop in Oxford, 2nd of May, Friday evening – Sunday noon
- 20–25 participants, European audience
- Speakers: Jaime Yassif (NTI), Cassidy Nelson (FHI), Piers Millett (FHI, WHO)
- Depending on funding situation: Free / ticket fee (80–150€) / mini-stipends
- Target group: EA aligned; Ambitious to contribute to GCBR reduction; Applicants from diverse backgrounds welcome
Goals:
Develop, communicate and establish a responsible, cautious and supportive culture for EAs around contributing to the delicate area of GCBR reduction.
- Map the current biosecurity space
- Understand what defines ‘robustly good’ in the context of GCBR reduction
- Develop concrete, focused and actionable ways of contributing to GCBR reduction
- Provide follow-up actions for participants and the EA biosecurity community as a whole
That's great!
I've been working on a biosecurity event (Catalyst) that's happening later this month in SF. It's going to be a larger and less purely EA audience (and thus I expect it to have less of a working-group atmosphere) but I'd be happy to connect afterwards and share any takeaways on biorisk event organization.
Absolutely :)
side-note: Appreciate how accessible you made this
I appreciate the "solidarity ticket" system & the public (but not too prominent) announcement here in the forum. I have the impression retreats like this one are often shared within closed networks only and/or have high entrance barriers (fees etc.), and to me, this seems like a better way to actually reach the most relevant people, even if they're not in the right networks already. There might be more considerations that I'm not aware of, though.
Is there already an online platform for EAs in biosecurity (besides the Facebook group)?
Other subgroups (EA Community Builders, EAs working in policy, EAs in Operations etc.) have active discussions in Slack workspaces, which seem great value. If you don't have that yet, I'd consider starting one and thinking carefully about criteria before inviting people (see "start with who" medium blog post)
If this does exist, I as EA Community Builder would appreciate hearing about it, so I can direct relevant group members there. Please comment or email me (manuel.allgaier@ea-berlin.org). Thanks!
This seems potentially high value, thanks a lot for the initiative!
Do you a specific target audience in mind? E.g. people with biology or policy background, people already working in biosecurity or just (EA-aligned) people generally interested in the field? I'll forward it to some EAs working in biosecurity now, happy to share it further if you wish.
All the best for your workshop!
in the application form we state
Target group:
- EA aligned
- Ambitious to contribute to GCBR reduction
- Applicants from diverse backgrounds welcome
Nice! Am I remembering correctly, that this workshop was seeded during a conversation at the last EAG in London?
Indeed :)