Hi folks - looking forward to doing some reflective / impact focussed poms with you all!!

If you can't make it in the morning, please arrive during one of the breaks at 11:50, 12:50, 13:50, 14:50, 15:50 and I can come down and let you in.

At the 11am pom, I'll be doing my quarterly review pom so can provide some structure/help those who've never done one before.

As usual, you're welcome to use the poms as generic coworking session to read about/work on/apply to EA stuff.

(Reminder that the LEAH office has moved to another unit in the building)

+1 on negotiating higher salaries - felt easier to do after taking the pledge.

Here's a good book summary of Never Split the Difference for those who don't want to buy the book. 

Ah glad the link worked. Not sure why it looked like it didn't. 

Let me know if you do end up interested in doing an editing event - happy to host an in person coworking session for it in London. 

Have the forum team considered running an online event to collaborate on improving wikis? I think wikis are a deeply underrated forum feature and a fantastic way for people who aren't new but aren't working in EA to directly contribute to the EA project.

I wrote a quick take a while ago about how it's probably too hard for people to edit wikis atm - I actually can't link to it but here are my quick takes: Gemma Paterson's Quick takes — EA Forum (effectivealtruism.org)

Thanks for pulling this together Ben! Have been impressed with your organisation and drive to make it happen.

Great opportunity for those based in the UK to engage and learn about our governments aid policy.

I enjoyed this post! 

In professions, Epistemic Responsibility is described as Professional Judgement which is a key virtue in addition to your expertise required to gain entry to membership. ICAS (my membership body) just added Moral Courage to their list of ethical principles

I don't think it is protected enough in society more generally (and tbh within professions these days)

Yes that'd be my sense.

Capital expenditure is money spent on an asset which can reasonably be assumed to generate future value for the entity either by increasing productivity or reducing costs. Expenses (including both cost of program/outcome and overhead costs) wouldn't really be an investment, it'd be a cost for something that doesn't have the ability to generate future returns or reduce the future marginal expenditure needed to generate the outcome again.

High quality assets like content, software and infrastructure can generate passive impact with minimal maintenance. Eg. 80k and Scott Alexander's content are still cited as the most common sources for new GWWC pledges.

Employees aren't usually considered assets for external financial reporting purposes because they are not owned by the shareholders and are free to leave. However, for a movement of people who all share ownership of EA and are not tied to any one cause area or charity, I think they can reasonably be defined as assets and a key insight from 80k is that for those with a motivation to do good effectively, there is a clear incentive to invest in your own career capital (as well as positive sum to invest time multiplying the impact of others).

The highest value assets IMO are EAs that can demonstrate a strong ability to apply the core skills (ie. cause prioritisation, impact evaluation and reasoning about evidence) AND can independently contribute. I've been somewhat concerned about the reduction in opportunities for low investment contribution since I don't think passive consumption of content is as effective for building EA knowledge that can be applied on high impact projects. The purpose of providing these opportunities (like wiki contributing, encouraging running events, volunteering etc) is more about investing in future capacity of EAs than the direct impact.

More detailed accounting answer you can skip 👇🏻

Capex isnt an expense as it doesn't go through the income statement (AKA Profit and Loss statement ie. part of the accounts focused on annual finance performance). Capex creates an asset that sits on the statement of financial position (AKA balance sheet ie. part of the accounts focussed on the value of the business/charity).

Capex doesn't go through the income statement all at once, rather the costs go through incrementally as depreciation (where there is a clear useful life of the asset like machinery or equipment) or as amortization (this is less useful for charities as it's mostly for tax purposes). The accounting problem this solves is that putting the full cost of the asset through the income statement all at once in the year of purchase is not a fair representation of the economic reality for the business since it isn't an expense for that one year.