Together with Anne Wissemann we are going to do a 2-day weekend workshop on applied rationality in Cologne, Germany. If you cannot apply since you have already scheduled something important, feel free to leave your email to be informed about future workshops in the Cologne area.

Summary

• Date: 19. & 20.01.2019, 9am - 6pm
• Application-form: https://goo.gl/forms/DLfsznUTbWzoIJV12 (Deadline: Friday, 11.01.2018, confirmations will be send on Saturday)
• Location: somewhere in Cologne... to be announced :)
• Costs: 40-60€
• Topic: CFAR-techniques and other useful rationality-concepts
• Limited to 20 attendees
• Target Group: Aspiring EAs & Rationalists
• Housing available on request

Aims

We - the EA Köln/Cologne group - want to contribute to the positive development of the EA & Rationality community.

Over the past year we organized weekly Meetups including Socials, Book-Clubs as well as talks with discussion rounds. Recently we decided to make weekend seminars and workshops a priority since they seem to have multiple benefits:

• real deep-diving into topics compared to evening events
• 'Unite' the EA & LessWrong communities addressing mutual interests
• socialize with great people
• filter for (really interested) newcomers
• Due to weekend time frame: invite great speakers and people from other cities (who would not take the effort traveling for an evening only)

Overview

Anne works as a coach for members of the rationality and effective altruism communities. In addition to her own CFAR workshop, she has volunteered as a mentor at 5 other mainline workshops since 2014, has undergone and taught at CFAR's mentorship training, as well as helped develop her local weekly Rationality Dojo in Berlin. She plans to teach the participants:

- Double Crux
- Focusing
- Internal Double Crux
- Trigger-Action Plans (TAP)
- Flash classes/concepts: Mindfulness, Negative Visualisation, Decreasing Marginal Returns, helpful Debugging prompts, Frogs, How to notice things, experimental mindset, and more!
- Hamming Circles = Debugging on what's most important
- Goal Factoring

For a more detailed description see this document.

Lunch, snacks and drinks are included. If you need housing, please take the steps indicated in the application form.

Past events

In mid November we had our first weekend workshop with Stijn Bruers about 'Rational Ethics'. We had participants from all parts of Germany including experienced EAs as well as some newcomers. 13/15 participants (no feedback from 2 participants) rated the seminar on a scale from -3 to +3. All indicated this event to be better then an average workshop (=0) and the mean score was 1.5.

Participants who answered the feedback form moreover indicated to be exceptionally interested in 'Rationality skills' and 'Mental well-being'.

Notes on finances

We were granted some financial support by CEA to start our workshop-series in November 2018. Since the workshops ought to be self supporting we charge low ticket prices to fund travel costs & adequat compensation for our speakers as well as lunch, snacks and drinks. In case we should make any profit it will solely be used to fund future workshops, allow discounts and the like.

During our last workshop ticket prices were not sufficient to pay for all the expenses. Thus we had to adjust the ticket price. Nevertheless discounts are available if needed.

Edit: typos

Edit 2: Remove a link