What can EA learn from Scouting
epistemic status: random notes for writing something more structured in the future
After EA fUnconference in Berlin, I’m thinking more and more about what we can learn from the scouting movement for purpose of community building/cooperation. Some elements characteristic of scouting (note, it’s a rough idea, I don’t think all of them are worth reproducing):
EDIT: to clarify (as I’m afraid now in this chaotic draft this may be misunderstood) this is not a list of things I observed on fUnconference. There there was only a partial implementation of the ‘small groups’ idea, as indicated in the text. Everything else is my memories from scouting times, and I never observed them in any EA group.
Arbitrary splitting larger groups into smaller troops (up to 10 people) with an appointed leader. On fUnconference this was implemented as “Huddle” groups, they were used only for daily checkups (how is everyone doing, does everybody feel welcome and is having fun) and once as (soft) default split for team-based games.
Assigning lots of meaning to color, name, and symbols related to your small group / larger community
Incorporating music both for general singing together but also specific songs for specific occasions (morning, before a meal, evening)
Also, spread and evolution of songs—various smaller communities will sing similar things but will develop slight differences in details in time. This gives you both sense of belonging to the whole movement (because you know the same songs) and your local group (because you sing them in a very specific way)
Rituals/traditions related to gathering around the campfire—leader of the gathering, a special role for the person sustaining the fire, a special role for the person starting the fire, singing together, order of picking songs to sing, order of speaking, gestures indicating you want to speak next
I think once on LW I found checking the reaction time with some app as a proposed fast and uncomplicated benchmark to investigate cognition correlations with time of the day, sleep deprivation etc.