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This is: Reflections on Berkeley REACH , published by stardust on the AI Alignment Forum.
This post covers my findings so far in the experiment of running the Berkeley Rationality and Effective Altruism Community Hub (REACH). Crossposted on EA Forum and LessWrong.
tl;dr
REACH has been running since March 2018 (around three months)
It’s doing well
Hundreds of people have enjoyed REACH
During the day, there are generally between 3 and 10 people coworking
Regular events draw 10-40 people
Large one-time events draw around 100
It has broad support -- over 100 people have donated significant time (from one afternoon of work up to around 40 hours) and/or money
Patreon, one-time donations, and guest rooms have covered the rent until it was recently raised
Community guests can stay there for relatively low prices for the area
It has been full 75% of the time in May
I’d like you to be involved
Visit and attend events at REACH
Volunteer (see this doc for some ways to help)
Host events
Monday, Thursday, and Friday nights are currently available for recurring or one-time events (see calendar)
Help bridge our funding gap
Rent has gone up to $6k/month unless we find a new venue
We need to be able to pay a manager
Managing the space takes 10-30 hours per week
Help us find and apply for grants
already planning to re-apply for CEA and BERI grants
Put your own money in the pot if you find the project valuable (see Patreon or Paypal)
Provide specific items to improve the space
Why We Needed a Community Space
What A Physical Space Can Do for Community
Around December 2017, I started thinking that it would be really nice to have a central place where community members could:
Conveniently host events (a function that had been fulfilled by the CFAR office before the switch to badged access)
Cowork with community members during the day
Come for low-key spontaneous socializing
Bring kids to play together
Be a default place to meet up with someone to chat about EA/R things
Crash on a couch or grab a bed and stay for a while
My initial thought was “we should buy a decommissioned church building!” However, I realized that funding such a large purchase would be pretty tricky, and that I could and probably should try out my ideas in a rental first and work toward buying a venue later.
Even Berkeley Can Be Lonely
People often talk about Berkeley as if it’s a magical community hub, but actually many community members feel lonely, depressed and/or anxious (including myself). This has been a theme that has been coming up in public spaces as far back as winter solstice 2014. I have seen several attempts to mitigate this issue, but none have seemed to stick.
Newcomers to the Berkeley community often find it difficult to become a part of the physical-space community—likely because much of the socializing happening in private spaces such as group houses, meaning that people only invite the folks they already know and trust.
There are LessWrong meetups in Berkeley and SF, and EA meetups in the South Bay, but travelling for at least an hour to get to a regular EA meetup felt too difficult to work into my schedule, and the Berkeley LW meetup hasn’t felt like the right space for me.
The Hopes of Project Hufflepuff
In 2017, Ray Arnold ran the Hufflepuff Unconference. At that event, I volunteered to join the bay area rationalist Welcoming Committee. That group accomplished a few things in the attempt to make the bay area community more inviting:
Ensured that larger, more open events happened every few months (previously there was only 1 community-wide open event per year)
Took over upkeep of the bayrationality.com website
Created a document with trigger action plans for being more welcoming
Started a discussion around documenting group norms
There were several other ideas which were discussed at the Project Hufflepuff m...
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