I would not be doing as impactful of a job if not for an 80k call ~3 years ago.

@Austin thirded -- posting here to get notified when you reply @marisavogiatzi

High upside impact, and worded carefully enough that I trust you know what you are doing. Come by the office in Serbia if you are ever around, and lmk if some of my resources in China may be of use (check me on LinkedIn for more info).

I think this is fairly neglected and think HIP is a good group to do this.

Brief update this time, more to be written in the updated main post.

What progress have you made since your last update?

We've set up the office and done some renovations which were needed (some paid by the landlord, mostly by Dušan). We have hosted a handful of researchers for mixed amounts of time, but we are mostly constrained in time as only one EA person is helping with the venue for a few hours per month (with Dušan holding a full time job and two board positions). Thus, we are now focusing on utilizing the venue more and organizing events and retreats, after finding someone to work full time on the office.
Some notable points:

One researcher applied for MATS and worked from the office a few days per week for a few months and is in the hiring process for Timaeus.

Serbia AI Safety Law team met in the office ~1 time per month while working on writing the law.

One researcher worked from the office for about two months, networked, and later went on to do PIBBSS Fellowship.

A Timaeus researcher stayed for a week with high praise.

Two more events and one more visit was planned but were cancelled.

One EA org retreat is confirmed for Serbia in November to be done in the office.

Once per month AI Safety meetings in the venue (besides the EA events which have also used the venue).

What are your next steps?

Hire our first employee (if funds allow).

Organize Serbia Summer Safety Sprint (4S, pronounced Force) with a focus on governance and technical safety people working together.

Keep existing, since one of our major benefits is being present in case of a global issue where we need to place researchers from visa-free countries that could not go to US/EU/UK but can come to Serbia.

Is there anything others could help you with?

Funds for employment, referral of good project managers for such a project, referral of people who need venues for retreats/coworking.

@Austin thank you for your continued support! Yeah, those are my thoughts too. We've applied to EAIF as a part of EA Serbia funding and did not get funding for the office (although we got funded otherwise), so they may be sceptical of spaces like these. Although recently Fixed point has had to close down, so that leaves only us in Europe outside of the UK (as far as I know) so maybe it'll be different now. I'll be sure to submit an application in August for both (I did not consider Meta Charity Funders, thanks for that!)
As for the cost of the more ambitious ask, it's in the budget in the original proposal, but warrants updating for sure before I make the ask to the funds, so I'll update it here as well once I finish it. Thank you again!

@Loppukilpailija Apologies for the late reply, and thanks for the patience, somehow I did not see the email! We've had some people come over (one from PIBBSS, one from Timaeus), and two orgs cancelled attendance due to scheduling conflicts, but we may yet have one more larger event happen before the end of the summer. Main blocker is that we do not have enough funds for anyone to work on this part-time even, and our volunteer work is keeping us afloat but not really growing us.

@ Hello Elizabeth! By the end of the week we'll have an update, but in brief what I said to Jason ~4 months ago still stands; we have people occasionally visiting, we had two more researchers come since then (one from Timaeus, one from PIBBSS who stayed around two months), all with positive experiences.

We are ops capacity constrained (funding is enough for the office space, not enough for salaries on top), so we are hoping for more funding for our more ambitious ask which includes a part time worker who would work on making the summer project a reality. Likely we'd start next summer, with maybe a small fall pilot to test what it's like to have many people come in. We are also looking into using a summer house of a EA Serbia member as a low-cost retreat venue for up to 20 people, perhaps in combination with this office to make it possible for small remote-first orgs to run retreats and also co-work.

Currently our funding for renting the venue ran out this month, so further funding would be great - currently I am paying for the gap from my pocket, but that cannot last too long.

@Jason Hi Jason, sorry, the notification went unseen by me for a bit there!
Benefits so far: We still have our one full-time person, plus a new researcher (predicted above). A few more signed up for summer so summer may be more active. Otherwise no new sign-ups yet which is underwhelming.
A benefit that I did not expect as much is the credibility that comes with having a physical office to offer to researchers in Serbia - Academics take me more seriously, and I hold more sway in conversation with politicians.
The idea for the next few months is to put a bit more effort into promotion, perhaps make a simple website, and see if we can get more people to use the office over the summer.

Thanks @RenanAraujo! I do recommend asking Gavin and Misha to weigh in on the value of this, but I responded to Austin on what my best guess of the value is from the few talks we did.
1) We have not had that many guests - we finished setting up recently, and most people who signed up to come have signed up to come in 2024. I do think we may push ahead with something like "Prague Fall Season" but much much smaller in scale because of our smaller office and no funding, in order to get more people to come at the same time and enjoy the network benefits.
2) We hope to have ~5 people around all the time, and that seems basically sensible from the sign-ups so far, although probably starting from Spring.

@Austin Thanks! I think the main value for them was a country to work from in which they can both be visa free while they recuperate their visa days for EU/wait for US visa. They also gave a great AIS talk and spoke about prediction markets which is still highly regarded talk by EA Serbia members, so some cross-benefits there. I am unsure how much they used the office as I do not work from there, and we were not fully set-up in October when they were here.

I generally agree - I would not like to have an abundance of hubs, compared to the benefit of having few. I would not start a hub in Serbia has it not been some interest and the offer of this extremely cheap office space. I think CEEALAR and Fixed Point both do important and good work, but they are in the UK and EU respectively and that is prohibitive for some people (hell, I need at least ~3 months to get a UK visa unless I pay ~250 pounds to speed up the process!)

@RobertCousineau Hi Robert! In the post on LW you can see photos of the space. Cost is about 550 Eur per month with utilities (internet, electricity, water), although we would prefer having ~600 per month so that we can pay someone to clean the office weekly. The office has been used to comfortably work for ~6 people working at the same time without any problems, up to 14 could be done for meetings and such, perhaps not for quiet work. The quality of furniture and such is not up there with fancier workspaces, but is good considering it is the free furniture we inherited in the space - we would improve it if we overcome the funding limit, based on what people want to see here.
So far, we had a PIBBSS fellow come over, @gleech and @yagudin (hopefully tagged the right person :D ), all because they needed time to work near EU but be some time outside of it due to visa limitations for UK/Russian citizens. We have some people who want to come because medical care here is radically cheaper and they need it/don't have it in EU so they can keep working here while taking care of their health, and two MATS alumni want to work from Serbia in ~few months. We also have currently one and possibly more researchers from Russia who already live in Serbia who could use office space which they currently lack.
We have not done much active outreach until now as we were testing the space so this is the passive gathering of people, conceivably there would be more, and depending on geopolitics, there may be much more need in the future.