European Community Weekend 2015 Impressions Thread

The second Secular Sermon, which premiered at the LWCW2015, is now online. I'll add a recording at some point - but of course you can make your own, since following advice gotten at the LWCW, the Sermons are now CC0 licensed.

I came to LWCW2015 struggling. This spring has been personally difficult for me, and so I didn't even want to talk about what I do, what interests me. I didn't even have it in me to tell Christian that my lightning talk was supposed to be cancelled.

This time there were places to hide from people and places to come to people. There was time that needed my own ideas. There were enough people so that I wouldn't feel awkward not knowing someone who joins my table at lunch on Sunday. Enough people so that "everybody hugs" would not be the default.

In general - there was time and space and good people to let me heal some, move and open at my own pace. I came home happier than I have been in 6 months. And I even have some anchors to keep the good parts.

I guess many participants are still in Berlin, traveling back home or understandably quite exhausted (I'm having sore muscles still and I guess esp. for the after-event boldering group it's much worse) ;-)

Many many thanks to the organizers from the Berlin LW meetup for making this possible. You did an awesome job and I think you found a great mix of talks, workshops and breaks (if you can call these intermissions packed with opportunities to engage in everything "breaks"). Also the location was nearly ideal with lots of inside and outside places to use. Did I mention the cuddle fort in the basement?

Now a roughly chronological log of activities I remembered especially fondly:

During Kajs workshop on growth circles (based on CFAR workshops) I got valuable feedback and ideas for new approaches on my most pressing challenges.

I very much liked the relating games. I already adapt them for my children and other settings.

Another thing I will try out is the model of motivation in teams developed by Tara. Or at least I will relate it to a colleague and will see whether we can apply it fruitfully (meeting already arranged).

I enjoyed the mutual comfort of the cuddle fort and had the opportunity for the first time to offer some massage to people I diodn't already know that well. Apparently it was quite well received.

I was deeply impressed by the Seven Secular Sermons.

There were also countless inspiring, deep and/or fun discussion about artificial languages, cuddling, face blindness, future of humanity, limits of technology, lucid dreaming, machine learning, massage, parenting, relationships, tulipas and many more topics.

All of this was rounded up by the sustainable change talk which prompted us to start acting on what we learned and I arrived at these points:

• Resolve some immediate questions from the event,
• Put my notes into structured form and then into my Anki deck(s).
• Reconsider loving kindness meditation.
• Exchange contact information (which I forgot last time) and
• Find someone who'd agree to periodically asks me for progress on my parenting blog.

Sadly I failed on the last item, but I precommitted on organizing another LessWrong Hamburg Meetup and already got some positive feedback in that direction. Cheers Neike!

The event was rounded up with a moving key note and a group photo ("3-2-1- victory!) on the outside.

Many many cheers to all participants! Without you this wouldn't have been possible! You are awesome!

Great weekend with lots of good talks. Many thanks to the flawless organization! Truly excellent. It would be great if Berlin could develop into a rationalist/EA hub, as was mentioned at the end.

No comments yet? Well. I find it difficult to put into words how awesome the weekend was. (Sometimes things really do live up to the hype.) 80+ extremely friendly, open and curious people got together to talk about almost everything. The amount of topics covered was super surprising as was the style. I didn't notice any status posing :-). Besides the interesting lectures (a big wave to all the effective altruists) and the impromptu talking we got to excercise social stuff and talk to/play with very nice plushies. I still need some time to process everything, but it was awesome and I look forward to the next (or any similar) event.

My deep thanks to the organizers for creating this amazing event!

The atmosphere was incredibly warm and welcoming.

I met many awesome people and had fun and stimulating conversations. If there is anything I regret, it is not connecting to even more of the participants.

I enjoyed all of the talks. Val's keynote was truly inspiring: he is a great speaker.

Kaj's group debugging workshop was a novelty for me, definitely something to try again in the future.

Looking forward to doing this again next year!

Were you doing this hugs stuff that was mentioned in the thread about the last one? I wasn't there, but I wonder what is the point, this kind of sentimental, emotional stuff. Does this kind of emotional closeness help the exchange of ideas and information? I would think it is the opposite that helps it: being very impersonal, on surname terms and so on. I mean emotional closeness could faciliate exchange of the "X is really cool, just because I have good feelings about X" type, and you probably don't want it, you probably want exchange of the "X is really useful, because evidence" type and I would think some "coldness" helps more there. Or where did the idea come from? Was the opposite idea (distance, formality,surname terms etc.) tested previously?

However on a meta level I approve of tags, as they are Tell Culture and if they very idea of hugs and emotional closeness comes up at all, tell-culture is probably the only non-awkward way to handle it.

In the 2014 there was a report of partner acrobatics.

It's super beautiful and it looks really fun and connecting. Just wondering if someone can share some tips for learning? A friend tipped me off about some events hosted by a juggling club near where I live, and I'm going to pester a few friends to learn with me with the videos here.

Any competiting advice?