Virtual EA Global: News and updates from CEA

By Amy Labenz, Barry Grimes @ 2020-03-17T02:40 (+84)

As you may have heard already, we’ll be holding our first Virtual EA Global instead of an in-person event this coming weekend. This will include:

1. A live broadcast featuring content from some of our planned speakers, which everyone is welcome to attend.
2. A series of “Ask Me Anything” posts on the Forum, in which anyone can ask questions.

The EA Global Broadcast

Everyone is welcome to watch the broadcast! 

We encourage you to invite your friends. During this time of social distancing, when many community events have been canceled, we hope this can serve as a gathering point for EAs around the world.

It will take place from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM Pacific Time on March 21st and 22nd. We chose these times with US and European time zones in mind, as most of our attendees live in those areas.

(Note that the US recently switched over to daylight savings time, so time zone differences outside the US may be different than for most of the year. Please check your local time to confirm.)

The agenda for the broadcast is here. A live host will provide updates and commentary during a varied programme of pre-recorded videos. On Saturday morning, you can visit the agenda page to see a link to the broadcast.

“Ask Me Anything” Sessions

Several speakers have agreed to run AMAs on the Forum in advance of the event. (For examples of past AMAs, see Will MacAskill or Rob Mather.)

In past AMAs, posters have replied to questions on the Forum. This time, they’ll be recording answers on video; we’ll stream those videos during the broadcast. They’ll also be posted on YouTube and linked from the AMA posts, so you don’t have to catch them live to view answers. Later, we’ll link to the videos from the EA Forum.

Current AMAs:

• Elie Hassenfeld, co-founder and CEO of GiveWell
• Leah Edgerton, Executive Director of Animal Charity Evaluators
• Toby Ord, author of "The Precipice" and co-founder of the EA movement

You can subscribe to comments on any of the AMA posts; this is the best way to learn when AMA videos are posted. And if you subscribe to comments on this post, you’ll get notifications whenever a new AMA post is published.

One-on-one Meetings

We still think that individual connections between attendees are one of the most valuable aspects of the conference, and we don’t want to sacrifice that just because we aren’t gathering in person.

We are piloting the use of “virtual meeting rooms” for attendees to connect with each other via the Grip app. Attendees should have received a Grip invitation a while ago after having been accepted to EA Global; if you have not received an invitation, please contact us at hello@eaglobal.org.

To get the most out of Grip, you’ll need to fill out your profile and schedule meetings ahead of time. We recommend doing this as soon as you can, so that you’ll be prepared well in advance of the weekend.

We are very uncertain how well the “virtual meeting rooms” will work. If they are well-received, we may consider having more “virtual” events or otherwise coordinating virtual one-on-one’s in the future, possibly with a broader audience (i.e. not just those accepted to the conference). 

Another way you can set up one-on-ones is to use this Forum thread, where you can share your contact information and notes on who you'd like to meet.

Enjoy the (virtual) conference!

We hope to see you at the broadcast this weekend, and asking questions on AMA posts this week! Please comment on this post or contact us if you have any questions or suggestions relating to the weekend’s events.

(We will do our best to respond to questions, but please keep in mind that we are trying to organize a new type of conference with only two weeks’ notice, and might not respond as rapidly as usual. We appreciate your patience.)