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Forecasting Meetup Network - Washington, DC pilot (4 meetups)

ActiveGrant
$657raised
$2,000funding goal

Project summary

The Forecasting Meetup Network will provide infrastructure for building the forecasting community, starting with 4 IRL monthly forecasting meetups in Washington, DC from September to December 2024. Activities will primarily include mingling, networking, and talking shop amongst attendees, giving them a chance to meet like-minded people, thereby creating stronger connections and dedication to the art and science of forecasting. Future events may involve live forecasting  (for example, election night watch parties, Oscars watch parties, etc), forecasting games, speakers, or similar.

Target audiences include: prediction market traders (i.e. users of platforms like Manifold, Good Judgment Open, and Metaculus), forecasting hobbyists, political gamblers (i.e. users of platforms like PredictIt, Kalshi, and Polymarket), consumers of forecasting and related content (i.e. consumers of content from StarSpangledGamblers, Scott Alexander’s Astral Codex Ten, Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin, and other Riverians), effective altruists, rationalists, sports bettors (i.e. users of platforms like FanDuel, DraftKings, and other sportsbooks), etc.

Other interested audiences may include: academics interested in forecasting / decision-making / behavioral science / risk, financial services professionals (financial traders, quants, etc), regulators / journalists / other parties interested in the regulation of prediction market trading and related activities, political operatives and other professionals in position of decision-making authority about future events, etc.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

The mission of the Forecasting Meetup Network is to positively influence the future by improving humanity’s ability to predict the future.

Our secret master plan to achieve this mission:

  1. Organize local forecasting meetups of forecasters, gamblers, and anyone else interested in predicting the future in Washington, DC.

  2. Expand meetups to other cities in the United States.

  3. Expand meetups to other cities and localities across the globe.

  4. In doing so, popularize and legitimize the practice of forecasting to predict the future.

  5. In doing so, influence key individuals and institutions best positioned to solve the most important problems in the world to use forecasting to improve their ability to predict the future.

  6. In doing so, positively influence the future of humanity.

The scope of this particular EA Community Choice funding request is specifically for point #1 above, organizing 4 forecasting meetups in Washington, DC from September - December 2024. Our goal is to have an average of 20 attendees across these first 4 meetups.

How will this funding be used?


This funding will be used to cover $500 (per meetup) worth of costs of organizing a pilot series of monthly meetups in Washington, DC from September through December 2024 (4 meetups for a total funding request of $2,000). Examples of costs to be covered include (in order of priority):

  • Meetup supplies like name tags, signs, etc to increase the quality of each meetup.

  • Rental/reservation fees of centrally-located semi-private or private spaces to maximize the ease of conversations between attendees.

  • Sponsored food and beverage to increase the appeal of each event, leading to higher attendance.

Absent funding, at least one meetup in September 2024 will still take place, with a potential to continue monthly, but in the public space of a venue like a bar or restaurant where it may be more difficult to identify and converse with other attendees, and where attendees would have to cover their own costs for food and beverage as desired.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

David Glidden is a forecasting enthusiast, effective altruist, and operations management professional at a technology consulting firm. He has volunteered at Effective Altruism Global and has organized meetups professionally as an employee for a cofounder matchmaking startup. He is a prediction market trader and creator on Manifold, a forecaster on Metaculus and Good Judgment Open, and a trader on PredictIt. He lives in Washington, DC.


Pratik Chougule consults professionally on political prediction markets and is the co-founder and executive director of the Coalition for Political Forecasting, an advocacy organization that aims to liberalize regulations on political betting in order to serve the public interest. He is also the host of the Star Spangled Gamblers podcast, where he shares his commentary and analysis on political betting with experts in the prediction market community. He is one of the most connected individuals in the prediction market and political gambling communities, frequently sought out by journalists to understand the space. He lives in Arlington, VA.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Most likely causes of this project failing:

  • Lack of bandwidth from organizers and/or scheduling issues - both David and Pratik have very young children and day jobs. Their passion for the forecasting community should ensure prioritization of the Washington, DC pilot initiative, but if the success of these meetups require significant personal sacrifices, they may not end up organizing all 4 meetups or continue beyond the initial pilot. This is especially true if the lack of funding results in a suboptimal experience for attendees that results in low turnout that would be discouraging to continue the series. There is also the risk that they might host 4 meetups but not all will occur monthly/before the end of 2024 due to scheduling and/or bandwidth issues.

  • Lack of attendance - there may be limited attendance if David and Pratik are ineffective at communicating/marketing to the audiences who would be interested in such a meetup, or there may simply not be much interest in such an event.

  • Lack of capable operational/volunteer support - while not covered by this initial request for funding, expansion to other cities will require volunteer organizers residing in those cities to organize meetups.

Outcomes if this project fails:

  • The forecasting community will remain fragmented - those interested in forecasting will instead continue finding community and loyalty in existing forecasting-related organizations, primarily around prediction market platforms like Manifold, PredictIt, and Kalshi or college groups like Optic.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

None at this time, though Pratik is considering contributing funds from his organization, the Coalition for Political Forecasting, though that would likely result in the meetup being more focused on political forecasting with less of a direct EA focus.

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

24 days ago

Progress update

What progress have you made since your last update?

We hosted our October meetup last Tuesday! We had 26 attendees, up from September's meetup where we had 16 attendees. We provided free pizza, salad, dessert, beer, wine, and soft drinks to attendees. We had a guest speaker, Professor Anthony Pickles.

We also received $2500 in funding from Manifold to sponsor October's meetup as well as quarterly meetups in 2025.

What are your next steps?

Schedule and plan a November/December meetup. The event page is here: https://partiful.com/e/25l8CCEwAuCwKCWEfC9V

We received some interest from a Polymarket employee about sponsoring future events, so we'll be following up with them about sponsorship.

Is there anything others could help you with?

Continued funding/sponsorship to help us secure private venues in the future for meetups and/or sponsor food for attendees.

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

27 days ago

Progress update

What progress have you made since your last update?

We hosted our September meetup! We had 18 people from the EA community, rationality community, Manifund users, a Polymarket employee, and individuals in the political gambling space.

We collected feedback via a survey afterward asking attendees to forecast their likelihood of coming to a future meetup - of the 3 individuals who responded, one said 85% and two others said 70%.

Pratik recorded and published a podcast episode where he interviewed me about how to organize a forecasting meetup (Apple Podcasts, Spotify).

Pratik and I finalized the details for our October meetup, which will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, October 29th at 6pm. We'll be spending the bulk of our funding from Manifund to cater the event with a pizza, salad, and dessert buffet, as well as beer, wine, and soft drinks. We also have a guest speaker lined up to discuss political forecasting. More details and RSVP here: https://partiful.com/e/ITHDAcznT1DppUXD2p9x

We met with Stephen Grugett about potential sponsorship from Manifold for future events. We have written a proposal we'll be sharing with him to see if we can come to an agreed sponsorship deal.

Finally, we got interest from an individual in Boston who may be interested in starting a forecasting meetup chapter there. He hosted a forecasting meetup on Thu, Oct 24th under the ACX banneer that seemed to go well.

What are your next steps?

Host the October meetup tomorrow and schedule and plan a November/December meetup.

Align with Stephen on a sponsorship agreement with Manifold for mid-term funding of the DC meetup group.

Is there anything others could help you with?

Continued funding/sponsorship to help us secure private venues in the future for meetups and/or sponsor food for attendees.

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

27 days ago

We also have 26 subscribers to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/forecastingmeetupnetwork

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

about 2 months ago

Progress update

What progress have you made since your last update?

Pratik recorded and published a podcast episode (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, starts at ~35:35) that previews and invites the Star Spangled Gamblers audience to the inaugural meetup on Thursday. It has a special shoutout to the original funders of this project - take a listen!

Pratik published another podcast episode (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) where he and I discuss the origin story of this meetup network idea and our vision for the future of the meetup network. A 2nd episode containing the rest of the interview will be published soon.

We created a Discord (bit.ly/forecastingdiscord) for meetup members to connect between monthly meetups, sharing forecasting resources, links, etc.

Pratik and I started planning the October meetup - we really want to go all-out on this one since it's right before the election.

What are your next steps?

Host the inaugural September meetup tomorrow and schedule and plan an October meetup.

Publish part 2 of the SSG podcast interview.

Is there anything others could help you with?

For our first meetup, we chose a venue that will give us a semi-private space for free, but being a bar it may not be the most conducive to facilitating conversation. We also will not be sponsoring food for this inaugural event. Additional funding will help us secure more private spaces in the future and/or sponsor food for attendees.

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

2 months ago

Progress update

Thanks for the support EA community! We welcome continued funding.


What progress have you made since your last update?

We raised $657 through the EA Community Choice funding round.

We booked a venue and scheduled our first meetup - we already have over 21 RSVPs with over a week to go!: https://partiful.com/e/zpObY6EmiQEkgpcJB6Aw

RSVPs have come from marketing efforts through the Forecasting Newsletter substack, EA DC newsletter, and various EA and forecasting Slack groups and Discord servers. The event page asks attendees where they heard about us when they RSVP, so we'll have some data to know our most effective marketing channels.

We set up a website/mailing list to keep the momentum and attendance for future meetups: https://bit.ly/forecastingmeetupnetwork

We recorded a podcast episode of Star Spangled Gamblers talking about this project that will be published in the next week or so.

David attended 1 rationality meetup and plans to attend another where he's recruiting attendees for the September forecasting forecasting meetup.

What are your next steps?

Continue marketing the event through additional channels.

Host the inaugural September meetup on the 26th and schedule an October meetup.

Publish SSG podcast episode.

Is there anything others could help you with?

For our first meetup, we chose a venue that will give us a semi-private space for free, but being a bar it may not be the most conducive to facilitating conversation. We also will not be sponsoring food for this inaugural event. Additional funding will help us secure more private spaces in the future and/or sponsor food for attendees.

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

2 months ago

Also, tracking meetup history, organizers, and expenses transparently here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-SoY03bQBqtWG7kBgVqdrheY2RuEmdCgFDXRv7x-N8w/edit

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

3 months ago

Thank you again @Austin ! Thanks for getting us to our minimum!

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David Glidden

3 months ago

Thanks @Austin !

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David Glidden

3 months ago

Like this project but run out of funds? An upvote is appreciated!

donated $50
🍉

nikki

3 months ago

Pratik does valuable advocacy for the forecasting community. Glad to support this.

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David Glidden

3 months ago

@nikki Thanks for your support!

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David Glidden

3 months ago

@Marine-Lercier thank you for your support!

donated $31
🥦

Tony Gao

3 months ago

Why do you want to expand to other cities and countries? Shouldn't a forecasting meetup originating in DC take advantage of its proximity to power and focus on getting forecasting normalized in US government and politics, rather than diluting its unique advantage?

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

3 months ago

@TonyGao Fair point. I'm very willing to reevaluate the strategy after this first pilot in DC (of which any funds within the funding goal from this EA Community Choice round would exclusively go).

That said, I'd argue that the same question could be asked of EA meetups - there are specific places where EA might make an outsized impact but I'd argue that doesn't negate the benefit of having EA meetups in many different communities, as a way of potentially creating a surround-sound effect for the movement that exponentially increases awareness and the perception of traction.

I also think there will be diminishing returns for funding in a single city, and a low cost but meaningful reward for spinning up meetups in other cities, as much of the operational challenge simply has to do with finding organizers who live in those cities and funding the minimum necessary to give any individual meetup a baseline level of attraction to draw sufficient attendees.

Dglid avatar

David Glidden

3 months ago

@TonyGao Thanks for your support!