Could this also be a good opportunity for pages written in languages other than English?

+1. Most people I speak to that 'only have heard of EA' explain EA as the idea that one should make more money to donate more (and more effectively). However, the principles described here are more encompassing. 

Thanks for this!  I did not realize 1 billion people currently live in slums.

Minor nitpick: The investigation is called shallow in the beginning, but in-depth in the end. 

I recommend A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence by Michael Wooldridge

For organizational psychology I have found the works of Adam Grant to be quite good at explaining the research

Thanks for encouraging people to write their first post,  I resonate with your words.

As for introducing yourself to the forum, people are encouraged to introduce themselves in the open quarterly threat I believe, see the current one. That might be a cleaner solution than writing lots of small introduction posts.

I encountered both types of participants (the ones that showed up because they had 'not much better to do' and the ones that are not used to committing). My impression was that most participants were ambitious and that they liked a challenge. The effect of the length of the event on potential participants with varying levels of ambition can be a bit ambiguous here. With a longer event it is also more likely that potential participants have other things planned during part of the event. My gut feeling says that making the commitment bigger than a day for an introduction hackathon (without coding) makes it less likely for people show up.