Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

Hide table of contents
Comment Permalink
Chris Lonsberry5
0
0

It looks like the EA Pen Pals project is closed for lack of funding.

Reply
See in context
by Amy Labenz, Barry Grimes
3 min read 2

26

CommunityBuilding effective altruismOpportunities to take actionConferencesCentre for Effective Altruism
Frontpage

As members of CEA’s events team, we wrote this post to provide readers who are newer to the community with ideas for how they can get involved in EA events, from small gatherings to large conferences.

If you have questions or thoughts on anything written here, please comment on the post or contact us via this form. We’d love to help you find ways to get involved!

Looking for events?

If you’re looking for more ways to meet people in the community, we suggest:

Finding a nearby group

There are hundreds of EA groups around the world; you can search for groups near you on the Effective Altruism Hub. 

Groups run many different types of events, from light social meetups to serious discussions. You typically don’t need any experience to join, though student groups may have events that are open only to students at the relevant school.

Meeting people 1-on-1

Whether or not you find a suitable group, EA has a strong culture of 1-on-1 meetings where you can get to know community members and what they’re working on. These meetings can focus on light socializing, heavy intellectual conversation, or anything in between — it’s up to the participants!

 A few ways to find 1-on-1 meetings:

  1. Sign up for the EA Pen Pals program, which matches participants from many different backgrounds for conversations about effective altruism. See here for more details on the project.
  2. Use the EA Hub’s list of EA profiles to see if anyone lives near you and has made their contact information available. (That's a sign that they might be open to meeting; don't hesitate to ask!)
  3. Post a question on the EA Forum to see if anyone wants to talk. This is more likely to work if there’s a certain topic or career path you’d like to learn more about. Even if you don’t find someone directly, there’s a good chance you’ll be referred to someone else who can help.
  4. If you are a woman or non-binary person, you can sign up to meet with an experienced mentor through WANBAM (Women and Non-Binary Altruism Mentorship).

Attending an EAGx conference

EAGx conferences are community-organized events featuring more introductory EA content than EA Global. They usually take two days and involve a few hundred attendees, plus a range of subject-matter experts who give talks and run workshops. There are usually EAGx conferences in Europe, Australia, and the eastern U.S. each year.

If you aren’t able to attend EA Global, then we recommend attending your regional EAGx event instead. An EAGx in Berlin is not just for the EA community in Germany; it's for anyone in Europe (or the world, if you want to make the trip) who is interested in EA ideas.

These events are partly meant to help new folks meet up with experienced speakers and established groups, even if they don’t live near a group themselves. In the past, these conferences haven’t had a formal application process — you could just buy a ticket and attend. (This could change in the future, so be sure to check for any EAGx you consider attending.) 

To see examples of past EAGx conferences, check out the EA Global events page. 

If you’d like to learn about future conferences, sign up for our mailing list (which shares news on both EAGx and EA Global). The EA Newsletter also posts notices of upcoming events.

Applying to EA Global

EA Global is aimed at members of the EA community who already have a solid understanding of effective altruism, but want to gain skills, network, present their work, or move into new roles. 

Our goals for these conferences:

  • Connect people and organizations with the resources they need to be successful (including talent, funding, networks, and ideas)
  • Promote and discuss new research and developments in the movement
  • Encourage connections, goodwill, and coordination among EAs from different cause areas and different parts of the world

You must submit an application to attend EA Global, and many strong candidates aren’t accepted, for a variety of reasons. That said, some newer applicants will be accepted, and if you’re interested, you should strongly consider applying. (Reading our recent article on admissions and admissions FAQ may help.)

If you aren’t accepted, we hope that the other events we’ve outlined here also interest you. Spending time with an EA group in your area, or attending an EAGx conference, is a good way to build experience and connections that will make you a strong candidate in future years.

26

0
0

Reactions

0
0

More posts like this

Comments2


Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
Chris Lonsberry5
0
0

It looks like the EA Pen Pals project is closed for lack of funding.

Reply
Manuel Allgaier2
0
0

Thanks for writing this up! 

Cause and career groups like Effective Animal Advocacy or the EA Consulting Network are in my opinion one of the best ways to get involved but they often get overlooked, would they be worth a mention here? 

Reply
More from Amy Labenz
184
Appreciating Stable Support Roles at EA Orgs
Amy Labenz
· · 2m read
4
4
132
What is the admissions bar for EA Global?
4 authors
· · 11m read
28
28
111
Update on EA Global costs and 2024 CEA Events Team activities
2 authors
· · 10m read
3
3
View more
Curated and popular this week
 ·  · 5m read
 · 
[Cross-posted from my Substack here] If you spend time with people trying to change the world, you’ll come to an interesting conundrum: Various advocacy groups reference previous successful social movements as to why their chosen strategy is the most important one. Yet, these groups often follow wildly different strategies from each other to achieve social change. So, which one of them is right? The answer is all of them and none of them. This is because many people use research and historical movements to justify their pre-existing beliefs about how social change happens. Simply, you can find a case study to fit most plausible theories of how social change happens. For example, the groups might say: * Repeated nonviolent disruption is the key to social change, citing the Freedom Riders from the civil rights Movement or Act Up! from the gay rights movement. * Technological progress is what drives improvements in the human condition if you consider the development of the contraceptive pill funded by Katharine McCormick. * Organising and base-building is how change happens, as inspired by Ella Baker, the NAACP or Cesar Chavez from the United Workers Movement. * Insider advocacy is the real secret of social movements – look no further than how influential the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was in passing the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 & 1964. * Democratic participation is the backbone of social change – just look at how Ireland lifted a ban on abortion via a Citizen’s Assembly. * And so on… To paint this picture, we can see this in action below: Source: Just Stop Oil which focuses on…civil resistance and disruption Source: The Civic Power Fund which focuses on… local organising What do we take away from all this? In my mind, a few key things: 1. Many different approaches have worked in changing the world so we should be humble and not assume we are doing The Most Important Thing 2. The case studies we focus on are likely confirmation bias, where
 ·  · 2m read
 · 
I speak to many entrepreneurial people trying to do a large amount of good by starting a nonprofit organisation. I think this is often an error for four main reasons. 1. Scalability 2. Capital counterfactuals 3. Standards 4. Learning potential 5. Earning to give potential These arguments are most applicable to starting high-growth organisations, such as startups.[1] Scalability There is a lot of capital available for startups, and established mechanisms exist to continue raising funds if the ROI appears high. It seems extremely difficult to operate a nonprofit with a budget of more than $30M per year (e.g., with approximately 150 people), but this is not particularly unusual for for-profit organisations. Capital Counterfactuals I generally believe that value-aligned funders are spending their money reasonably well, while for-profit investors are spending theirs extremely poorly (on altruistic grounds). If you can redirect that funding towards high-altruism value work, you could potentially create a much larger delta between your use of funding and the counterfactual of someone else receiving those funds. You also won’t be reliant on constantly convincing donors to give you money, once you’re generating revenue. Standards Nonprofits have significantly weaker feedback mechanisms compared to for-profits. They are often difficult to evaluate and lack a natural kill function. Few people are going to complain that you provided bad service when it didn’t cost them anything. Most nonprofits are not very ambitious, despite having large moral ambitions. It’s challenging to find talented people willing to accept a substantial pay cut to work with you. For-profits are considerably more likely to create something that people actually want. Learning Potential Most people should be trying to put themselves in a better position to do useful work later on. People often report learning a great deal from working at high-growth companies, building interesting connection
 ·  · 31m read
 · 
James Özden and Sam Glover at Social Change Lab wrote a literature review on protest outcomes[1] as part of a broader investigation[2] on protest effectiveness. The report covers multiple lines of evidence and addresses many relevant questions, but does not say much about the methodological quality of the research. So that's what I'm going to do today. I reviewed the evidence on protest outcomes, focusing only on the highest-quality research, to answer two questions: 1. Do protests work? 2. Are Social Change Lab's conclusions consistent with the highest-quality evidence? Here's what I found: Do protests work? Highly likely (credence: 90%) in certain contexts, although it's unclear how well the results generalize. [More] Are Social Change Lab's conclusions consistent with the highest-quality evidence? Yes—the report's core claims are well-supported, although it overstates the strength of some of the evidence. [More] Cross-posted from my website. Introduction This article serves two purposes: First, it analyzes the evidence on protest outcomes. Second, it critically reviews the Social Change Lab literature review. Social Change Lab is not the only group that has reviewed protest effectiveness. I was able to find four literature reviews: 1. Animal Charity Evaluators (2018), Protest Intervention Report. 2. Orazani et al. (2021), Social movement strategy (nonviolent vs. violent) and the garnering of third-party support: A meta-analysis. 3. Social Change Lab – Ozden & Glover (2022), Literature Review: Protest Outcomes. 4. Shuman et al. (2024), When Are Social Protests Effective? The Animal Charity Evaluators review did not include many studies, and did not cite any natural experiments (only one had been published as of 2018). Orazani et al. (2021)[3] is a nice meta-analysis—it finds that when you show people news articles about nonviolent protests, they are more likely to express support for the protesters' cause. But what people say in a lab setting mig
Recent opportunities in Building effective altruism
45
The CEA Events Team is Hiring for Three Program Lead Positions
OllieBase
· · 3m read
0
0
22
Call For a University of Minnesota EA Group
Kenneth_Diao
· · 2m read
1
1
49
EA Global Referral Program
Ivan Burduk
· · 2m read
8
8
View more