“12x more cost-effective than EAG - how I organised EA North 2025 (and how you could do something similar)” by mtths

I put on a small one-day conference. The cost per attendee was £50 (vs £1.2k for EAGs) and the cost per new connection was £11 (vs £130 for EAGs).

intro

EA North was a one-day event for the North of England. 35 people showed up on the day. In total, I spent £1765 (≈ $2.4k), including paying myself £20/h for 30h total. This money will be reimbursed by EA UK[1].

The cost per attendee was £50 and the cost per new connection was £11. These numbers are significantly (over 10x) lower than for EAG events, suggesting that we should be putting on more smaller events.

I am not arguing that EAGs should not exist at all. A local event will likely never let me connect with someone living on another continent in person.

My main goal with this post is to encourage individuals to put on more events like this (25-75 people from a set of nearby cities).

I also hope that this post inspires existing organisers to further bring down costs of larger events, including EAG events.

If you would like to read more about EA North 2025, read this retrospective.

why [...]

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Outline:

(00:32) intro

(01:43) why you can probably do this, too

(02:31) what I spent the money on and a comparison with EAG London 2023

(03:17) budget breakdown

(04:53) cost per attendee per day

(05:22) cost per connection

(07:24) what I spent my time on

(08:30) ideas for being even more cost-effective

(09:33) recommendations to funders

(09:55) reconsider how many resources you spend on small applications

(10:53) consider providing funding upfront

(11:27) thermal printers are cool and cheap

(11:59) conclusion

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 2nd, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/m9sTFoAsE8dSnzoBt/12x-more-cost-effective-than-eag-how-i-organised-ea-north

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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