Putting the festival at the same time as EAG London is unfortunate.
Giving out “over 100 free tickets” induces (in me) a reaction of “If I’m not invited I’m not going to buy a ticket”. This is perhaps because I hope/wish to slide into those 100 slots, even though it’s unrealistic. I believe other events solve this by just giving a list of a bunch of confirmed attendees, and being silent about giving out free tickets to those.
I anticipate the vast majority of people going to each of the events will be locals to the state and landmass respectively, so I don’t think it’s actually particularly costly for them to overlap.
That’s unfortunate that you are less likely to come, and I’m glad to get the feedback. I could primarily reply with reasons why I think it was the right call (e.g. helpful for getting the event off the ground, helpful for pinpointing the sort of ideas+writing the event is celebrating, I think it’s prosocial for me to be open about info like this generally, etc) but I don’t think that engages with the fact that it left you personally less likely to come. I still overall think if the event sounds like a good time to you (e.g. interesting conversations with people you’d like to talk to and/or exciting activities) and it’s worth the cost to you then I hope you come :-)
That’s unfortunate that you are less likely to come, and I’m glad to get the feedback. I could primarily reply with reasons why I think it was the right call (e.g. helpful for getting the event off the ground, helpful for pinpointing the sort of ideas+writing the event is celebrating, I think it’s prosocial for me to be open about info like this generally, etc) but I don’t think that engages with the fact that it left you personally less likely to come. I still overall think if the event sounds like a good time to you (e.g. interesting conversations with people you’d like to talk to and/or exciting activities) and it’s worth the cost to you then I hope you come :-)
Maybe to clarify my comment: I was merely describing my (non-endorsed[1]) observed emotional content wrt the festival, and my intention with the comment was not to wag my finger at you guys in the manner of “you didn’t invite me”.
I wonder whether other people have a similar emotional reaction.
I appreciate Lightcone being open with the information around free invitations though! I think I’d have bought a ticket anyway65% if I had time around that weekend, and I think I’d probably have a blast if I would attend.
Um, one part of me is (as is not uncommon) really believes in this event and thinks it’s going to be the best effort investments Lightcone’s ever made (though this part of me currently has one or two other projects and ideas that it believes in maybe even more strongly), that’s part of me is like “yeah this should absolutely happen every year”, though as I say I get this feeling often about projects that often end up looking different to how I dreamed them when they finally show up in reality. I think that part would feel validated by the event turning out to be awesome and people finding it was worthwhile to come. Then there’s the question of how much resources Lightcone actually has and whether we’ll successfully fundraise and whether this will be one of the few projects we’re investing a few staff-months in a year from now. I think my probabilities just went from 80% to 50% to 99% to… 30%. Overall it depends on how good this event is, which varies on a log scale.
I think there are worlds where we do it again and invest less effort into it, also there’s worlds where we do it again and invest more effort into it. I think there’s also a bunch of worlds where we’re happy about this event but try a subtly different one next time (e.g. me and a teammate generated like 5 other serious event contenders before this one, including things more like workshops or academic conferences than like large festivals, and perhaps we’ll try a different thing next). I think I like that this event is essentially open-invite and trying to be more big-tent, and I hope to do more things like this, so that even if we change what sorts of events we run anyone will just be able to buy a ticket. There’s also worlds where we stop exploring having an events team for our campus and stop running events.
As one datapoint, in 2021 I organized a 60-person private event called the Sanity & Survival Summit for rationalist folk and folks working professionally on x-risk stuff, and I thought we’d maybe make that a yearly thing, and a year later we sort of last-minute/impromptu ran another version of it called Palmcone (it was in the Bahamas) for 80-100 people, and then we made the Lightcone Offices to try and get a more permanent version of the EA/x-risk things in the Bay, and then we scrapped the whole thing as we uninvested in the professional x-risk/EA ecosystem. That’s a possible trajectory things could take.
Putting the festival at the same time as EAG London is unfortunate.
Giving out “over 100 free tickets” induces (in me) a reaction of “If I’m not invited I’m not going to buy a ticket”. This is perhaps because I hope/wish to slide into those 100 slots, even though it’s unrealistic. I believe other events solve this by just giving a list of a bunch of confirmed attendees, and being silent about giving out free tickets to those.
I anticipate the vast majority of people going to each of the events will be locals to the state and landmass respectively, so I don’t think it’s actually particularly costly for them to overlap.
That’s unfortunate that you are less likely to come, and I’m glad to get the feedback. I could primarily reply with reasons why I think it was the right call (e.g. helpful for getting the event off the ground, helpful for pinpointing the sort of ideas+writing the event is celebrating, I think it’s prosocial for me to be open about info like this generally, etc) but I don’t think that engages with the fact that it left you personally less likely to come. I still overall think if the event sounds like a good time to you (e.g. interesting conversations with people you’d like to talk to and/or exciting activities) and it’s worth the cost to you then I hope you come :-)
Maybe to clarify my comment: I was merely describing my (non-endorsed[1]) observed emotional content wrt the festival, and my intention with the comment was not to wag my finger at you guys in the manner of “you didn’t invite me”.
I wonder whether other people have a similar emotional reaction.
I appreciate Lightcone being open with the information around free invitations though! I think I’d have bought a ticket anyway65% if I had time around that weekend, and I think I’d probably have a blast if I would attend.
Btw: What’s the chance of a 2nd LessOnline?
I think my reaction is super bound up in icky status-grabbing/status-desiring/inner-ring-infiltrating parts of my psyche which I’m not happy with.
Um, one part of me is (as is not uncommon) really believes in this event and thinks it’s going to be the best effort investments Lightcone’s ever made (though this part of me currently has one or two other projects and ideas that it believes in maybe even more strongly), that’s part of me is like “yeah this should absolutely happen every year”, though as I say I get this feeling often about projects that often end up looking different to how I dreamed them when they finally show up in reality. I think that part would feel validated by the event turning out to be awesome and people finding it was worthwhile to come. Then there’s the question of how much resources Lightcone actually has and whether we’ll successfully fundraise and whether this will be one of the few projects we’re investing a few staff-months in a year from now. I think my probabilities just went from 80% to 50% to 99% to… 30%. Overall it depends on how good this event is, which varies on a log scale.
I think there are worlds where we do it again and invest less effort into it, also there’s worlds where we do it again and invest more effort into it. I think there’s also a bunch of worlds where we’re happy about this event but try a subtly different one next time (e.g. me and a teammate generated like 5 other serious event contenders before this one, including things more like workshops or academic conferences than like large festivals, and perhaps we’ll try a different thing next). I think I like that this event is essentially open-invite and trying to be more big-tent, and I hope to do more things like this, so that even if we change what sorts of events we run anyone will just be able to buy a ticket. There’s also worlds where we stop exploring having an events team for our campus and stop running events.
As one datapoint, in 2021 I organized a 60-person private event called the Sanity & Survival Summit for rationalist folk and folks working professionally on x-risk stuff, and I thought we’d maybe make that a yearly thing, and a year later we sort of last-minute/impromptu ran another version of it called Palmcone (it was in the Bahamas) for 80-100 people, and then we made the Lightcone Offices to try and get a more permanent version of the EA/x-risk things in the Bay, and then we scrapped the whole thing as we uninvested in the professional x-risk/EA ecosystem. That’s a possible trajectory things could take.