EA - Announcing the Meta Coordination Forum 2023 by MaxDalton

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing the Meta Coordination Forum 2023, published by MaxDalton on September 10, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Continuing our efforts to be more transparent about the events we organize, we want to share that we're running the Meta Coordination Forum 2023 (an invite-only event scheduled for late September in the Bay) and provide community members with the opportunity to give input.HighlightsEvent Goal: Help key people working in meta-EA make better plans over the next two years to help set EA and related communities on a better trajectory.Agenda:Updates from subject-matter experts from key cause areas.Discussions on significant strategic questions.Clarification of project ownership and forming of actionable plans.Attendees: A group of key people focused on meta / community-building work. Not focused on other key figures beyond the meta space.Organizing Team: The Partner Events team at CEA (Sophie Thomson, Michel Justen, and Elinor Camlin) is organizing this event, with Max Dalton and other senior figures in the meta space advising on strategy.Community Engagement: We'd like to hear your perspectives via a survey by 11:59 PM PDT on Sunday, 17 September. The survey asks about the future of EA, the interrelation between EA and AI safety, and potential reforms in meta-EA projects.Post-Event: A summary of survey responses from the event will be made public to encourage wider discussion and reflection in the community.The event is a successor to past "Leaders Forums" and "Coordination Forums" but is also different in some important ways. For further details, please see the post below.Why we're running this eventNow seems like a pivotal time for EA and related communitiesThe FTX crisis has eroded trust within and outside the EA community and highlighted some important issues. Also, AI discourse has taken off, changing the feasibility of various policy and talent projects. This means that now is an especially important time for various programs to reconsider their strategy.We think that more coordination and cooperation could help people doing meta work make better plansWe think it could be useful for attendees to share updates and priorities, discuss group resource allocation, and identify ways to boost or flag any concerns they have with each other's efforts. (But we don't expect to reach total agreement or a single unified strategy.)What the event is and isn'tWe think it's important to try to give an accurate sense of how important this event is. We think it's easy for community members to overestimate its importance, but we're also aware that it might be in our interests to downplay its importance (thus inviting less scrutiny).The event will potentially shape the future trajectory and strategies of EA and related communitiesFirst, some ways in which the event is fairly important:It will bring together many important decision-makers in the meta-EA space (more on attendees below).These people will be discussing topics that are important for EA's future, and discussions at the event might shape their actions.The event aims to improve plans, and hopes that this leads to a better trajectory for EA and related communities.The event may facilitate further trust and collaboration between this set of people, possibly further entrenching their roles (though we're also trying to be more careful about how much we limit this; see below).The event will not foster unanimous decisions or a single grand strategySome ways in which the event is less important:It is not a collective decision-making body: all attendees will make their own decisions about what they do. We expect that attendees will come in with lots of disagreements and will leave with lots of disagreements (but hopefully with better-informed and coordinated plans). This is how previous ...