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by gergo
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Crossposted on The Field Building Blog's Substack, subscribe here.

The aim of this blog is to share knowledge among community builders.

There are good resources on CB in the form of resource centres, talks, and guides. Still, I feel none of these really show “how the sausage is made” the same way one can go down a rabbit hole when they want to read about take-off speeds. I have found myself explaining the same considerations about funding, heavy-tailed impact, retreats and the like to new community builders many times. In its least ambitious version, this blog will at least serve as a place where I can point people to.

I think the most valuable conversations on field building are happening when people share their hot takes at conferences, retreats, or between staff members of fieldbuilding orgs that are just a bit too edgy to write up for the EA forum. The aim of this blog will be to host such conversations, talk about big-picture strategy in fieldbuilding and share my work experience of the space from the past years. I want to help new community builders to peek behind the curtain, and experienced ones to share their thoughts unapologetically. I also want to improve epistemics around field building and help people become better calibrated in assessing its value.

About me

My name is Gergő, and my academic background is in psychology. I’m the director at the European Network for AI Safety and founder of Amplify, a marketing agency dedicated to helping fieldbuilding projects. My journey into communitybuilding started in 2019 with organising EA meetups on a volunteer basis. 

I started doing full-time paid work in CB in 2021 when I founded an EA club at my university (it wasn’t supposed to be full-time at least at the beginning, but you know how it is). This grew into a city group and eventually into a national group called EA Hungary. We also spun out an AIS group in 2022, which I’m still leading. AIS Hungary is one of the few AIS groups that have 2+ FTE working for them. 

Previously I was a volunteer charity analyst and analysis coordinator for SoGive, an experience I think of fondly and I’m grateful for. I have also done some academic research in psychology.

Why should you care?

As the title suggests, this blog will be most useful for current and aspiring fieldbuildiers, but I will also cover AIS strategy, fundraising and careers to some extent. I will also aim to keep posts brief so that it’s possible to do most readings in 5-10 minutes. To help you decide whether you want to stick around, here are some of the content I’m planning on publishing:

  • Why I think EA and AIS fieldbuilding is bottlenecked by marketing
  • Whether or not you should hold socials
  • How to optimise your introductory courses
  • Doing fieldbuilding as a long-term career path
  • Why city groups are hard to organise
  • Why I think CEA has been scapegoated for all things wrong in EA space and communitybuilding
  • My thoughts on Bluedot’s relationship to the rest of the AIS fieldbuilding ecosystem

I will also bring interviews and guest posts from all the fieldbuilding organisations that you know and love. For now, I have commitments from PIBBS, Apart Research, and Bluedot but I’m planning to cover other organisations such as CEA, Arkose, FAR AI, Kairos and more.

I hope the posts to come will bring you value. I would really love for you to engage with this content by sharing your thoughts in the comments and asking questions. Your feedback is highly appreciated throughout this journey, so please don’t hesitate to share any by emailing me at gergo[at]enais.co, or through this form, (anonymously if you wish). If you are working in fieldbuilding and would like to write a guest post, be interviewed about your role or collaborate in some other form, feel free to reach out at gergo[at]enais.co.

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GV 🔸4
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Interesting topic ideas, thanks in advance Gergő!

Quick question: why not write on the EA Forum? I am not convinced by "the most valuable conversations on field building are happening when people share their hot takes at conferences, retreats, or between staff members of fieldbuilding orgs that are just a bit too edgy to write up for the EA forum". Is it just a better "writer experience"?

To be clear, I am interested enough in your views that I went to Substack and subscribed to your newsletter! It seems to me that for your topics, there are much stronger reasons to stay on the forum than for leaving it: I suppose you'll get more readers; it will be more convenient for said readers; there's a good comments system; the audio transcription; there are previous of within-forum links; and probably other important things I'm forgetting.

If you want people to take your writings less seriously, and to be able to write without spending hours reviewing your texts, maybe you could use the "quick takes"?

(super interested to hear what was in favor of Substack! :) )

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gergo1
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hey! Sorry, I missed this until now.

Quick question: why not write on the EA Forum?

Thanks for this question, I realize it's worth clarifying what I mean exactly: I think there are a lot of valuable conversations happening that never end up being shared on the forum, even though they should be. I think this is because 1) lack of time 2) small demand (there are not that many fieldbuilders) and 3) and potential authors worrying about how the author is going to be perceived if they share their thoughts without much filtering. (e.g. it is easy to come across as elitist when talking about CB, and it takes a lot of time to explain a nuanced take on these issues)

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gergo1
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I'm definitely post my writings on the forum! (one can just cross-post from substack)

It seems to me that for your topics, there are much stronger reasons to stay on the forum than for leaving it: I suppose you'll get more readers; it will be more convenient for said readers; there's a good comments system; the audio transcription; there are previous of within-forum links; and probably other important things I'm forgetting.

(super interested to hear what was in favor of Substack! :) )

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