What is the difference between the San Francisco and Washington DC EAGs?

By Eevee🔹 @ 2022-06-01T23:45 (+16)

I'm interested in going to one or the other, but I can't tell ahead of time what talks each of them will have.

Nathan Young @ 2022-06-02T00:15 (+32)

evelynciara @ 2022-06-02T02:17 (+6)

What's funny about it?

david_reinstein @ 2022-06-02T14:25 (+24)

I think it's that San Francisco is meant to be a bunch of buttoned-up tech-bros and Washington DC is really going out their with all sorts of flashy and innovative legislation?

Julia_Wise @ 2022-06-02T17:05 (+18)

Even if the content of talks is fairly similar at the EA Globals in different cities, the vibe among attendees tends to be different. In SF there will be more people in tech, more in AI safety, more people involved in niche subcultures. There hasn't been an EA Global in DC yet, but I'm guessing the attendees will have more people in policy work and academia, with a more mainstream cultural vibe.

Eli_Nathan @ 2022-06-02T14:16 (+20)

Hi Evelyn,

(For context I work on EA Global at the Centre for Effective Altruism.) Good question! Right now we expect the conferences to be fairly similar, with EA Global: San Francisco attracting more of the EA community on the west coast and EA Global: Washington, D.C. attracting more of the EA community on the east coast.

We’ve not yet locked in the talks and workshops for the two conferences, though we expect the Washington D.C. event to have more content focused around policy and government, as well as attendees that are more interested in these areas.

Hope this is helpful!

Charles He @ 2022-06-02T19:52 (+6)

Random fan fiction, might be useful for onlookers:

San Francisco is going to be close to a lot of canonical historical EA stuff:

The city is the home offices of Open Phil, LessWrong
The city is the home offices of Anthropic, Open AI, and several nascent organizations along those lines, working in AI, tech.
Even for people working in non-AI safety, San Francisco, will be big because of associations in animal welfare, cultured and alternative protein.

One thought is that this might naturally make Washington DC look “comparatively shadowed”, but it's not totally clear.

Obviously, the Washington event is more accessible to people on the US east coast and presumably people interested in government and policy.

Also, more fan fiction, is that the value of events are complicated and individualistic. The focus, size, and a general sense of "atmosphere" or “cohesion” can make a big difference.

Kyle Lucchese @ 2022-06-03T18:01 (+2)

Hi Evelyn,

I'm one of the Organizers with EA DC (not directly involved with EA Global). I would be happy to chat with you about "DC culture" and what it's like as an EA in DC. That said, this may or may not be helpful as it relates to EAG DC, as that event's attendees will mostly be from out of town.

If you feel would be helpful to chat more, feel free to schedule some time with me and/or send me an email.

Either way - hope to see you at an EAG soon!

~Kyle