Do you want to work in the new Boston EA office at Harvard Square?

By Kaleem, Jonathan Michel @ 2022-05-12T19:27 (+101)

TLDR: We're opening a Constellation/Trajan/Lightone style office in Boston in 2023 and we're interested in user feedback.

We – Kaleem Ahmid, EV’s new Project Manager for the Boston Office, supervised by Jonathan Michel, EV’s Head of Property – are managing the creation of an office space in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is currently projected to open in the first half of 2023. The (currently unnamed) office will consist of a space dedicated to EA outreach, and a productivity-optimized, professional, interdisciplinary co-working space.

Our current plan includes: 

• Student outreach: One section of the space will be outreach-focused, with a coworking/event space and various meeting spaces for students at Harvard and other Boston-area schools and offices for full-time outreach professionals.
• Professional coworking space: One section will be dedicated to full-time professionals, in the style of Trajan House or Constellation, with private offices, meeting and coworking spaces, and various amenities. We imagine this will accommodate ~40 people at any given time.

Note that there will be a reasonably clear separation between these two spaces, e.g. being on different floors.

We won’t be settling on the final group of individuals and orgs who will work in the office space for a while, and reserve the right to make changes to the mix as the space develops. However, if you are interested, we encourage you to read on.

 If you might want to work in either of these spaces, please fill out our interest form ASAP for two reasons: 

1. We are in the early design stages, and many of the decisions we will make benefit from potential-user input.
2. As we approach the opening of the space, we will reach out to people who fill out this interest form as we build our initial community, including both full-time office occupants and tentative plans for a semester-long fellowship to work out of the office and talk to a bunch of students. So if you express interest early, your application will be considered when there are still plenty of spots to fill. Don’t wait too long!

We’re also interested in hearing about other people who you think we should consider reaching out to, or who should fill out this form. Feel free to tell us at the end of filling it out yourself, or send me a DM. Some examples of people we’d be interested in hearing from:

• You are a dedicated and knowledgeable EA and would like to work from our office to engage with others members of the community.
• You are working for an EA org, starting a new EA org, (in the area) and you are looking for an office.
• You’re an experienced community builder and are interested in building the EA community at Harvard/MIT, and want to use the dedicated outreach space at the office to do so.
• You’re working on an EA project which would benefit from being housed in a space full of other EAs or in proximity with university students.

Why a Boston/Cambridge, MA hub for outreach and EA more broadly?

The office will be located in the only two mile radius on earth home to two of the world’s top 5 universities, in the center of Harvard’s campus (less than 5 minutes walking-distance from the Kennedy School, the Law School, the Science Center, and most undergraduate residences), as well as being within half an hour of other well-regarded universities like Tufts, Boston University, Brandeis, Northeastern, Boston College, Suffolk University, Emerson, UMass Boston, and is right next to a subway station on the MBTA red line (15 minutes to MIT).

EA community building is a high-impact endeavor. Increasing the chances of Harvard and MIT students to pursue high-impact careers seems like a very valuable thing to do. A world-class office is one way to attract high-performing members of the EA community to come and work in close proximity with talented students with whom they can share exciting ideas and core values.

Boston is also already home to (at least some employees at) various EA organizations, including the Legal Priorities Project, Alvea, Kevin Esvelt’s Sculpting Evolution lab, CEA, and various university-affiliated and independent researchers and community builders/meta-EA professionals. We also expect more initiatives and organizations to be started in Boston which this office could house as well. Facilitating more information transfer and a sense of shared purpose between these groups and individuals seems important. Boston is also a ~17-minute drive from an airport with regular nonstop service to SF, London, DC, NYC, and Nassau, and is geographically central amongst that group of cities, making it a good point of convergence when needed.

Gratitude

We’d like to thank the team of people who have identified this space and have worked voluntarily on this project in their spare time up to this point – Trevor Levin, Christoph Winter, Lucius Caviola, and Nikola Jurkovic.