Manuel Allgaier

710Wedding, Berlin, GermanyJoined Sep 2018

Bio

Participation
1

Former director of EA Germany and EAGxBerlin 2022 event lead, currently on a career break to explore some longtermist & AI Safety ideas as well as work on personal (non-public) projects

 

Bio: I worked full-time in EA movement building (funded by CEA) as Director of EA Berlin (2019-21) and Director of EA Germany (2021-22) and EAGxBerlin Event Lead (2022). Previously, I worked in sustainability consulting and charity management, studied environmental science, economics & IT and volunteered in lived and worked in Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Amsterdam and Berlin.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelallgaier/

How others can help me

If you have any ideas for EA Berlin or would like to get involved, I'd be happy to hear from you! Just message me here on the forum or on Linkedin.

Feedback on me and my work is always welcome: bit.ly/ea_anonymous_feedback

Comments
104

TLDR: Agree with the risks, unsure if it's better to restrict flirting for "x weeks" or for "however long there's a power dynamic and/or vulnerability etc"

Thanks for sharing! Good to be reminded that this is a risk in any community (especially communities with both personal and professional relationships) and that others may have thought more about this and found better solutions. 

This seems most risky in situations in which: 
- Alice is new to EA (still in the "orientation phase") and looking for jobs. 
- Bob is an experienced (paid or volunteer) EA group organiser, could help Alice professionally (knows people who might have jobs for Alice etc) and also finds Alice attractive. 

The risk seems to come from a perceived [1]or actual power dynamic, and this is exacerbated if one person is somehow "vulnerable", like when they're new to the community and don't yet know the norms, or do not yet feel comfortable expressing boundaries or reaching out to other community members to ask for advice or support. @Severin Would you agree? 

If that's the case, would it make sense to discourage/ban flirting not for x amount of weeks but for however long there's a (perceived or actual) power dynamic and/or "vulnerability"? This might then vary between one week (?) and forever. 
 

  1. ^

    Note that a perceived power difference is sufficient - if Alice thinks that Bob has the power to help or hinder her career (maybe because he mentioned he knows influential person x personally), that will make her hesitant to express boundaries when she receives unwanted attention from Bob, even if it's not actually true. 

I feel like you're being unfair here.

The EA community engages quite a lot with its critics, more than the average movement. Of course reactions will differ in a community of ~10k active members, but the most upvoted posts & reactions I read are usually very empathetic and caring.

Also this post is about the Rationality community, and I think it'd be better to keep the discussion about that and not mix in EA community issues here (there are enough other posts about the EA community).

@David_Moss

Any updates on when you're able to share results?

Fwiw: This might locally differ. The EA coworking office in Berlin is going strong and a second related space (Aurea) just opened. I think there's probably demand for more co-living spaces and maybe also more coworking spaces in the coming year, and they probably could be (mostly) funded by members, so not depending on donors.

PS: I wonder if you could do both raising awareness of "investing to give" and advertising your products in different posts, without one affecting the other? I think this might be worth a try. You could include disclaimers wherever relevant. 

TLDR: I appreciate Marco, Sana & SageWealth, but do think that this is probably not a good place to advertise such products (based a.o. on feedback from their talk at EAGxBerlin)

Marco's co-founder Sana gave a talk at EAGxBerlin 2022, and as event lead, I read through all participant feedback. This was one of the more controversial sessions at EAGxBerlin- some (especially those new to investing) found it quite helpful, while others (including some with more investing expertise) were more critical for various reasons. 

I don't know enough about SageWealth's products to have an informed opinion. Just from reading through the EAGx feedback and comments here, I do share the general sentiment that EA spaces like EAGx or this forum are probably not good places to advertise such products (unless you want to be totally truth-seeking and also include all the reasons against buying the product, alternative products from other companies etc). 

I do agree that many EAs probably underestimate the benefits of investing their savings (rather than just keeping them sitting idle on a bank account), and I appreciate Marco & Sagewealth for bringing attention to this! I'm also glad to have Marco & Sana in the EA community - I've met them often on various events around Berlin, had many interesting conversations and always enjoyed their company :) 

Rejections always suck, I feel you! :(

If you still want to go, is there an EAGx nearby you could apply to? In my experience as EAGxBerlin 2022 organiser, for most people EAGx conferences provide about the same amount of value than EAG's but the admission bar is lower.

EAGx's also get similarly high average participant ratings - our EAGxBerlin last year had ~900 attendees (similar to pre-pandemic EAG London) and was rated 8.7/10, and I heard that some smaller EAGx's got even better ratings up to 9.x/10.

Which "core EAs"? Many engaged EAs have their own preferences and theories re. EAG size, but in the end, only the CEA events team decides on admissions (sometimes consulting others afaik).

If raising the retirement age is not feasible, another option might be to create more and better opportunities for retired people to engage with and contribute to society in part-time paid or volunteer work? 

My impression is that here in Germany, it seems like the potential of retired people might still be underused (based on very anecdotal evidence, I didn't research this). 

This seems valuable, thanks for setting it up! 

It's been three months now - can you share any updates on how it's going so far? If you have any numbers you can share here or on the website (such as # of candidates who signed up, # of organisations who used the service and # of successful matches), I'd find that helpful to decide whether to sign up. If there's a bottleneck on either side (orgs or candidates), let us know!

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