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In a previous post we wrote about the concept of leverage when running events.
We think that satellite events are a promising area of leverage around EA conferences, and that local groups & community builders (not the core conference organising team) are well positioned to run them. If you or other organisers already investing hundreds of hours into a conference, you could plausibly boost the connections by 25% by investing time into recruiting pre/post-event organisers. I think you could pick the lowest hanging fruit with ~50 person-hours of work (this could be a paid role). In this post, we present the impact case for satellite events, and list out several specific, low-cost things people could do.
Here are some very (very) rough and conservative BOTECs to give you a sense of the additional hours needed and the connections that could be made at a typical EAG(x).
We've used connections made as the main benchmark metric, since this is a key metric for EAG(x) conferences. We think it is overly simplified and doesn't capture all of the impact and value.
Organising events around the main event results in about ~half as many connections as the conference itself, excluding the retreat.
| Event | Prep Time (person-hours) | Participants | New connections made | Total connections |
| EAG (x) | 400+ | 500 [1] | 7 [2] | 3500 |
| 5 days of coworking | 6 (book coworking space) | 15 | 6 | 90 |
| 1 pre-event social | 8 (book out a bar) | 60 | 4 | 240 |
| 2 post-event socials | 10 (to book 2 spaces - you can repeat venues) | 150 | 6 | 900 |
| Housing coordination | 20 (matching people in hotels) | 100 | 3 (incl. repeat) | 300 |
| Group chat / slack | 3 (create the chat, add people) | 50 | 1 | 50 |
| Total | 47 | 1580 | ||
| 3 day community retreat | 100 | 20 | 25 (incl. repeat + longer interactions) | 500 |
| Total | 147 | - | - | 2080 |
We think repeated connections are just as valuable as one-off connections. They might plausibly be more important. You might also want to weight peer to peer connections and advisor-advisee connections (which you'd expect more of at the conference) differently, depending on what goals you are prioritising. We will write more about measuring connections in a future post.
How to do it:
Pre-events can make the conference less intimidating as people will now see familiar faces around (more important if they are newer) and allow for additional time for people to meet and connect.
Social events - est. 5 hours per event
EAG prep session - est. 3-4 hours (2 hours for the MVP)
You can run and encourage other group organisers to run more content-focused sessions such as:
Ideally make sure someone is running 1-3 virtual sessions to allow people not with in-person groups to attend and learn.
Post-conference events
The conferences are pretty formal / intense for the most part, so it can be nice to have an explicitly social event where there is no expectation or norm of working. It's important for newcomers to see that the EA community is also a place where we can also have fun, unwind and relax. Socials are also a great opportunity for making friendships and deeper connections with others.
The EA London group often organises socials at bars before EAG London (they just book a place and publicise it, and might have name tags, and people can order food or drinks if they want), which mostly run themselves . But if you're throwing a social for an EAGx, the dynamics are different - there may be more students, more first-0time
How to do it:
We have previously made the case for writing a guide to your city - with housing info, how to get around, find vegan food, any weird travel restrictions or tips, and contact people who could answer questions. You could draft a low-effort version by copying parts of the guide we wrote for Berkeley or this one on EA in the UK.
Create group chats / Slack channels as schelling points - est. 1 hours to set up & 1-4 hours to answer questions
Creating a Messenger or WhatsApp chat people can join helps - folks often actively seek out ways to meet each other! You can also create a Slack channel (or equivalent) if your group for conference-specific questions (this could also boost engagement on your workspace in general).
To save your time, add your top 10 most engaged community members to help address any questions attendees may have! We recommend doing this ~2 weeks before the conference.
Housing coordination (beyond blocking rooms at a hotel) - est. 2-20 hours
The simplest version of this is creating a housing chat, channel, or spreadsheet and making sure it's shared with attendees (you can ask the event organiser for help with that) (1 hour). You could also help with matching people with roommates, helping larger groups stay at nearby Airbnbs, and asking local group members to also host visitors- this can be pretty fun! These kind of connections can be quite counterfactual, since it can be hard to know who is looking for housing without being very proactive about it, and it makes a better attendee experience (and save some community time in coordination and money).
Having a fun housing experience makes the event a more memorable and becomes a bonding experience in and of itself for attendees. It can help to have some familiar faces going into a conference, and to have people to go home with at the end of a busy day - basically, more chances for folks to get social support if they need it. Conferences can be overwhelming.
Start housing coordination early - ideally 3 weeks before the event - and encourage people to sign up by setting deadlines.
How to do it:
We don't have much to say here - simply put, it's usually a good time to run retreats when people (especiall senior EAs) are already in town. However, keep in mind that both retreats & conferences are really intense, so packing them closely could affect people's overall ability to fully engage with either. (and keep in mind your energy levels too - it's okay to not feel like you can attend a conference and plan a retreat for the same week). A more relaxed community retreat which focuses on reflection and socializing could be a good option if you're concerned about energy levels (some notes on creating the right "vibes").
This post is part of an ongoing series: Events in EA: Learnings and Critiques.
EAGx's vary quite wildly in terms of size - in 2022 size ranged from ~350 attendees to 1000.
From CEA's estimates
