EA - EAGxCambridge 2023 Retrospective by David Mears

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: EAGxCambridge 2023 Retrospective, published by David Mears on July 18, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Written by the core organising team for EAGxCambridge, this retrospective evaluates the conference, gives feedback for the CEA events team, and makes recommendations for future organisers. It's also a general update for the community about the event, and an exercise in transparency. We welcome your feedback and comments about how we can improve EA conferences in the future.You can watch 19 of the talks on CEA's YouTube channel, here.Attendees' photos are here, and professional photos are in a subfolder.SummaryWe think EAGxCambridge went well.The main metric CEA uses to evaluate their events is 'number of connections'. We estimate around 4200 new connections resulted, at an all-told cost of around £53 per connection (=$67 at time of writing), which is a better cost-per-connection than many previous conferences. The low cost-per-connection is partly driven by the fact that the event was on the large side compared to the historical average (enabling economies of scale to kick in) and encompassed 3 days; it was also kept low by limiting travel grants.Of these 4200 new connections, around 1700 were potentially 'impactful' as rated by attendees. (Pinch of salt: as a rule, people don't know how impactful any given connection is.)The likelihood-to-recommend scores were on a par with other EA conferences, which are usually very highly rated. (The average answer was 8.7 on a 1-to-10 scale.)Besides making connections, we also wanted to encourage and inspire attendees to take action.82% of survey respondents said they planned to take at least one of a list of actions (e.g. 'change degree') as a result of the conference, including 14.5% resolving to found an EA organisation and 30% resolving to work full-time for such an organisation or in a primary cause area. After applying a pinch of salt, those numbers suggest the conference inspired people to take significant action. We heard of several anecdotal cases where the conference triggered people to apply for particular jobs or funding, or resulted in internships or research collaborations.We're very thankful to everyone who made this happen: volunteers, attendees, session hosts, and many others.ContentsFor more in-depth commentary, click through to the relevant part of the Google Doc using the links below.Basic statsStrategyWhy Cambridge?Focussing on the UK and IrelandCore teamCompressed timelinesBudgetAdmissionsSome admissions statisticsStewardshipVenuesMain venue: Guildhall first floorSecondary venue: ground floorTertiary venue: Lola LoAcousticsCoordinating with venue staff on the dayOverall viewVolunteersNumbersAttendee experienceMore snacksBetter acousticsFaster wifiFood was "incredible" / "amazing" / "extremely good" / "really excellent"Attendee SlackContentAttendee favourites"Were any sessions you attended particularly good? Which ones?"MerchSatellite eventsCommunicationsDesignComms strategyComms tacticsCloser to the conference itselfFeedback survey resultsNet Promoter ScoreDemographicsResulting actionsWelcomingnessFor the sake of the search index, those videos are:Testing Your Suitability For AI Alignment Research | Esben KranGood News in Effective Altruism | Shakeel HashimCombating Catastrophic Biorisk With Indoor Air Safety | Jam KraprayoonShould Effective Altruists Focus On Air Pollution? | Tom BarnesAlternative Proteins and How I Got There | Friederike Grosse-HolzHow Local Groups Can Have Global Impact | Cambridge Alternative Protein ProjectGlobal Food System Failure And What We Can Do About It | Noah WescombeInfecting Humans For Vaccine Development | Jasmin KaurExistential Risk Pessimism And The Time Of Perils | David ThorstadHow To Make The Most of EAGx | Oll...