Manifest attracts devotion unusual for a conference. "Dinners and meetings and conversations with people building local cultures so achingly beautiful they feel almost like dreams."^[1] "This strange blend of data and debauchery."^[2] "That magical feeling of serendipity, where you can flow through a space, passing from conversation to conversation, contribute to each one in turn, and have others do the same for you."^[3] Even those who run it say it's "a tough event to describe."^[4]

We attempted a replication.

I won't bury the lede. You can just steal things. Manifest replicates.

Group photo was Ghiblified for privacy, as recommended by Jeff Kaufman

This post tells the story of the event. If you're just here for take-aways, you may want to skip to:

Budget
Feedback
- Review from an attendee, Matt Beard
Lessons Learned
Advice to Future Organizers (full post to come)
- Notably the separate post on Ticket Strategy, which we recommend

The Gazebo of Schemes

I had a very strange time in Berkeley last June. I came with a message to deliver, ideas to refine, and work to do. In the week between LessOnline and Manifest, I frequently worked from the gazebo in the center courtyard of Lighthaven. I got a lot done, advanced work that continues to compound. I'm proud of what I accomplished.

Just under the surface I was a mess. But I didn't want to let the trip be about that. I wanted to seem OK, convinced myself that I needed to project a certain image of stability for the sake of duty. Given the crowd, to keep up appearances I leaned into being more adventurous and playful.

Someone gave me access to a printer. I had a role to play. I started labeling things.^[5]

Hastily-Printed "Gazebo of Schemes" Duct-Taped to a lovely Lighthaven Gazebo — Gazebo of Schemes, mid-plot

I named my preferred spot the "Gazebo of Schemes," gathered a cabal of friends, and appointed myself chair. Even as the chair of this invented commission, I imagined us to be staffers. I greeted passers-by with variations on: "Welcome to the Gazebo of Schemes, how may we assist your schemes?" This is an excellent discussion prompt, often getting people to reveal quests they didn't know they had.

The Gazebo of Schemes hereby claims partial credit/blame for several dates, one relationship, at least one lawsuit, several wardrobe upgrades, [redacted] instances of corporal punishment, four or five conference talks, a feud, and finally, this conference series.

@Ben S. flew out for Manifest and immediately loved the atmosphere, how Lighthaven's design created a distinct kind of conference. When the Gazebo of Schemes first called him to adventure, he was still taking it all in, had no plots to offer. But after barely more than a day, he hatched a scheme to bring something like Manifest to the East Coast, to bring this social technology to our friends back home.

I was honor-bound to assist.

Exodus

As a staffer, I know how to support a principal. The job is mostly to be annoying. Hey Ben, remember that crazy idea you had? You should totally do it. Hey Ben, David and Pratik would be interested in your idea. Hey Ben, I was thinking... Hey Ben, have you told... and on, and on, and on. The sad part is, I'm a very good bureaucrat.^[6]

Ben naturally gravitated towards programming, which speakers to invite, what kind of events and panels to put together, and venue selection. How to handle the people. I tackled logistics, budget, planning, and the Gantt charts, the parts that are fun for me. @David Glidden signed on to be the day-of volunteer coordinator. Pratik offered to recruit additional speakers. We had a team, but no clear idea for what to do next.

How do you transplant a conference that is such a product of its venue?

First we looked for the elements that weren't. Manifest takes a lot from the Rationalist Unconference playbook: invite interesting and agentic people, get them talking online before the event, and occasionally butt in to say, "that's really interesting, you should put that on the calendar!" But unlike most Unconferences I've seen, Manifest has a default, a main stage that's fully programmed in advance. Since there's always something sufficiently interesting going on, organizers don't have to rely on any particular Unconference session. This gives people space to be niche and experimental. If attendees aren't interested, that's fine, they'll go to the prepared talk or panel instead.

Manifold, the platform, provides another: interesting markets to discuss, an implicit bullshit tax on sloppy predictions, and a pressure to keep heated conversations grounded by searching for cruxes that can be operationalized into a market. To speed this along, it seemed important to seed the conference with several Manifest regulars, particularly Manifold power-users who broke disagreements into markets instinctually. Several names immediately came to mind, people who'd probably fly out if invited.

In looking for the portable elements, we had derived some venue preferences after all. We would need several rooms, but one should be larger than the others, large enough to fit most or all attendees. This argued against most apartments or renting a few classrooms. We wanted some sort of place that would feel distinct enough to break people out of day-to-day political arguments. We also wanted something that felt special enough to tempt a few friends to fly in. We ruled out anything that felt like an office or a sterile hotel conference center.^[7] We started looking for suitable venues, but nothing seemed right.

Then the solution fell into our laps, two friends suggested their technically-not-EA Group Houses. Workshop House was a former rectory that's configured for small events, with a large living space, several breakout rooms, dark wood and stained glass. Very Bayes House. Embassy House was a beautifully renovated, modernly-appointed, former embassy that throws large parties. Very Aumann Hall. Both had excellent roof decks. We couldn't decide, so we picked both. We argued a bit internally about which was suited to which role, but decided Workshop was best for the daytime programming, and Embassy was a better fit for the afterparty.

Once we had the concept and venues, things started to fall into place. Ben talked to the Manifest team, Austen, Stephen, Ian, and David Chee, they shared a wealth of knowledge and offered to sponsor. We found some dates that worked, November 8th seemed good. We agreed with the venue on a capacity of 60. I was able to catch up with Austin at Metagame and iron out some logistical details (his offer of Mox's ticket system was a particular lifesaver).

Momentum started building. We announced locally to give a head start to our target market: local rationalist-adjacent who might enjoy Manifest proper. We also leaked the invite to some regulars at Lighthaven who might travel in to help set the tone. We went "wide" a few days later, announcing via email, in blog posts, and in Prediction Market discord servers. People quickly joined the Manifest x DC discord server, as we were still setting it up. We sold out in six days.

The Big Day

It’s a sad irony that throwing an event you want to exist doesn’t necessarily mean you get to attend it. We had Robin Hanson and Peter Wildeford give prepared talks, had panels on forecasting politics and the future of Manifold, even a forecasting game… and I missed almost all of it. I heard they were all good talks, I caught five minutes here and there, sat in on some of the smaller panels upstairs, but mostly I was coordinating. If you want to know what happened at the conference, Matt Beard’s review is a great summary.

Robin Hanson describing Elegant Ideas with Messy Details

I was responsible for two parts of the calendar. After Ben welcomed attendees, and David gave logistical notes, I delivered an “Opening Benediction,” one last step to copy over the tone of earnest and playful truthseeking from Manifest. Being jailed in a walled compound is no excuse for missing my conference, so that afternoon I ran a virtual panel from Inkhaven, roping in three friends who are locked in Lighthaven for the month of November and forced to blog daily. To join, attendees were asked for a blog post prompt–that didn’t need to be good–just sufficient to stave off eviction one more day.

Mainly, though, the day was a blur. I left this section to write until last, hoping I’d have more to say, but I still don’t. The work felt good, felt rewarding. People seemed to enjoy it. I enjoyed it. I had missed this.

As the sun set early, we closed the day, kicked participants out onto the street to form groups for dinner, cleaned up Workshop house, got dinner for the volunteers, then changed into Black Tie for the afterparty.

I tried to stab Ben for being underdressed, but couldn't stop laughing long enough to enforce the dress code.

Numbers

Financial

We collected $5,217 in revenue net of refunds:

Sponsorships: $2,000
Early Bird Tickets: $1,600
Full-Rate Tickets: $845
Last Chance Tickets: $480
Supporter Tickets: $730
Less Refunds: $-438

Total expenses were $4,821:

Venues: $1,826
Catering: $1,234
Supplies, Snacks, and Afterparty Alcohol: $1,030
Custom Badges and Lanyards: $371
Miscellaneous Reimbursements: $185
Ticket Transaction Fees: $175

This leaves a modest surplus of $396, which we're leaving as seed money for the next Manifest X.

Somewhat surprisingly, this event would have been feasible without sponsorship. We would have needed to charge $10-20 more per ticket, drive a harder bargain with our main venue, and cut back on supplies, catering, and the afterparty. All were fairly doable, though negotiating harder with the venue would have risked offense, since their asking price was already a "friends" rate (starting from a market rate would have made things harder).

Feasible, yes, but this would have been much more stressful to organize on a tighter budget. I was nervous about asking friends to buy tickets from me on faith. My arbitrary comfort threshold was $50, getting the Early Bird price to that target helped me pitch enthusiastically. The slack in the budget gave us peace of mind to solve problems with money. We had a healthy contingency reserve. We paid for rush printing and shipping when we were delayed on the badges. When our first choice caterer closed unexpectedly, we were able to fall back to the easiest backup plan rather than seriously shopping around. We were more generous with refunds than our written policy, even offered to refund dissatisfied attendees after the fact in exchange for feedback. No one took us up on this.

What the sponsorships and supporter tickets really bought was the organizing team's peace of mind. We're very grateful.

Participant Feedback

We had 62 attendees in all, 16 filled out the post-event survey. This data is skewed by a response bias. Half of our survey responses came from people who have been to a Rationalist-style Unconference before, but this group was a third of attendees, and we were pretty confident the event would go well for them. We were hoping to hear from people less familiar with this format, and only got 8 responses from those ~40 attendees. However, to mitigate the risk that we would not hear from those who were unhappy with the event, we incentivized negative feedback, offering refunds to anyone who regretted their ticket purchase in exchange for filling out the survey. No one took us up on this.

Responders were divided roughly evenly between liking that size or preferring somewhat larger. 2 of 16 wanted over 100 attendees. I feel like the sweet spot for ManifestX events is in the range of 50-80, depending on the city.

Forms response chart. Question title: On a scale of 0 to 10, how much would you recommend Manifest x DC to a friend?. Number of responses: 16 responses. — Net Promoter Score

Forms response chart. Question title: How FUN was the event?. Number of responses: 16 responses. — Fun Quotient

Forms response chart. Question title: Best part of the event. Number of responses: 15 responses. — Best Feature

Forms response chart. Question title: What did you think of the venue?. Number of responses: 15 responses. — Venue Quotient

Forms response chart. Question title: Food, 0-10?. Number of responses: 16 responses. — Food Quotient

Forms response chart. Question title: To the extent we face a tradeoff between FUN and USEFUL, how should we approach that for future events?. Number of responses: 16 responses. — Fun vs Usefulness Tradeoff

Naming the Event

It would be bad form to detail internal arguments and disagreements. But people made predictions, that's totally different. Suffice it to say, @Austin Chen was right and John got wrekt. Participants overwhelmingly preferred making the "x" lower-case, and moderately preferred Austin's recommended spacing of "Manifest x DC":

Lessons Learned

Charge More

Our post-event survey strongly endorsed charging more. There is some response bias, half of our respondents had been to Manifest or a similar Rationalist Unconference before. But we also literally offered refunds in exchange for negative feedback, and no one took us up on this. 15 of 16 responders were willing to pay at least 20% more. 11 of 16 responders were willing to pay at least 50% more, where we could have done the same spending without sponsorships.

Events shouldn't charge more just to pay organizers a profit. This is a terrible way to make money. The $396 surplus works out to less than $2/hour for organizer's work, raising prices might have increased that to $10/hour, still far from an attractive professional wage. But money is useful to improve the event. If we had a reliably larger budget, we might have rented more space, (which all participants would have liked, if available), or kept the group together for dinner. We had an two-hour break for dinner, 6-8 PM, to clean Workshop House before the afterparty. At least a third of participants went home and didn't make it back out to the afterparty.

We promoted the section on Ticket Strategy to its own post a few weeks ago, to get the word out fast. For a quick summary, several recent Lighthaven events have shared a ticket strategy with three pillars:

Significant early discounts to entice people to make plans.
Tickets are sold in tiers, with well-publicized plans that prices will increase as the event gets closer. Tiers can be differentiated by time, by number of tickets, or both.
A generous refund policy until shortly before the event that essentially eliminates the risk of buying an early ticket.

We implemented this and it worked well. We sold out in six days, well over a month out. We charged $65 for tickets by default, $50 for early bird (the first 30 tickets), and $80 for "last chance" tickets after the cancelation deadline. Supporter tickets, for a fancier badge and our thanks, cost twice the going price at the time (so, $100, $130, or $160). We offered full refunds less transaction costs until two weeks out, and had lower attrition than expected, replacing those who dropped from a wait-list.

For details and discussion of how this solves coordination problems, see the standalone post.

Mistakes

We set up a Manifold Market to predict and mitigate what might go wrong. In the end, very little did. Manifold's T-shirts were delayed but made it to the venue by the afternoon. One of our speakers ended up double-booked, but arrived as his talk was scheduled to start. The Geneva and Vienna Conventions were upheld, despite some real risks. Someone tried to hyperstition "Fire!", adding it to the market and betting it up, but our valiant traders thwarted him and arbitraged it away.

Casualties

@Alex Caswen defends himself from the press

Our only injury was from the afterparty dueling. Minutes after this picture, an extremely stabby participant from a different sparring pair managed to draw a bit of blood from the afterparty host, with the host's own plastic sword. Luckily everyone took this well, "Wait, am I actually bleeding? Awesome!"

Underestimated Demand

We underestimated demand at nearly every stage. We had 62 participants in total, including organizers, speakers, and volunteers, an informal waitlist of at least 10, and obvious latent demand for another 20 seats. We could have easily gotten 90 participants if we had sufficient space, without any additional promotion work. With a reasonable amount of work to spread the word, we could have far exceeded 100.

We overestimated pre-event cancellations (only five; we had guessed 10), day-of no-shows (only three; we had guessed four or five), and attrition during the day (we expected more people to only come for part of the day, but we probably had 55-58 people in the building between Noon and 4pm). The one exception was the afterparty, we expected nearly everyone but about three-fifths of attendees came. The two hour break for dinner, and using a different venue almost a mile away, surely contributed.

Policies

We should have had a harassment policy. An individual was told in writing that they were unwelcome, then bought a ticket anyway, which we canceled and refunded. They later showed up uninvited to the morning-after brunch we organized, which we handled poorly. They used a series of small escalations, announced an event that just happened to be at the same venue at an overlapping time, arrived and set up at a different table, then moved to an adjoining table, then joined the group, then changed seats to sit by the target of the harassment. This was a public place, and we had already asked them not to come through an intermediary, so we couldn't remove the person. The targeted participant left the brunch rather than confronting the behavior, but we should have done more to prevent the harassment. This is uncomfortable, seems to be escalating, and I would appreciate advice on what to do about it if it recurs in future events.

Think of a photo policy in advance. We announced one on-the-fly, that everyone pictured would need to give explicit permission to share a photo, which we later felt was too restrictive. A better way to both allow photos and opt-outs would have been to have a list of those who were opting out on the discord or attendee guide, and have them put stickers on their attendee badges as a reminder.

Write a survey in advance. A participant saved us by writing a starting draft the evening of the event, that we were able to revise and send out two days later. We got some good responses, but it would have been better to have it ready to go at the closing session.

The afterparty venue wanted to screen attendees, as a condition of hosting. We used an "approval-required" partiful listing to do this. This worked, but it was awkward, required extra steps from participants to request access, and took a lot of work to coordinate. In retrospect, a cleaner way to handle it might have been to make the afterparty invite-only; share the attendee list with the afterparty hosts and simply let them invite whoever they wished.

Venue and Logistics

People love to congregate in doorways and chokepoints, we should have discouraged that more. We caught and fixed one chokepoint we'd inadvertently created with folding chairs. But a lot of this is innate, the doorway is just the obvious place to be while someone decides if they want to attend this breakout session or head back to the main room. It's understandable, we just should have asked volunteers and session hosts to encourage attendees to fully enter rooms.

I inadvertently discouraged people from using one breakout room all morning by sitting down with laptop and coordinating logistics. I would have moved, but I'm sure I didn't look particularly approachable. Once I left, the room booked up for the rest of the day.

Chipotle catering was fine, but surprisingly expensive. We ordered what Chipotle claimed would be sufficient to serve 70. It was just enough for the 55 people who ate, at a cost of $22.43 per person (including tax, no delivery or tip). With better planning we could have reduced this cost by at least a third. Also, food for 55 is a lot of food. We originally sent three volunteers with a cart to pick up the food, but had to send reinforcements to assist.

Someone brought and handed out gum, which was thoughtful and helpful in our close quarters, but annoyed some participants. Mints would have been better. Similarly, someone brought a portable mechanical keyboard, which made disruptive noise that we should have put a stop to.

What's Next?

Glory, mana, and our $396 surplus await whoever organizes the next Manifest X. Our post-event survey reveals there is at least some demand in NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, Raleigh-Durham, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, and Tokyo. The DC organizing team is happy to advise and talk through issues. Reach out to @Austin Chen if you think you have what it takes.

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@TracingWoodgrains on Twitter: https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1800790146633138395
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Kevin Roose in the New York Times: https://archive.ph/sf5lw
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Theo Jaffee on Substack: https://www.theojaffee.com/p/manifest-manifested
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Rachel Weinberg on Substack: https://rachelweinberg.substack.com/p/manifesting-manifest
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I am professionally interested in State Legibility, after all.
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https://youtu.be/YYMY8DlpPRY?si=H80CUxrQzSqujnY-&t=156
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I think hotels are underrated. Plenty of events can be run there well, especially if your group is showing up with its own distinct culture and expectations. We could absolutely run a ManifestX in a hotel conference space if everyone had been to Manifest before. Hotel conference spaces are less suited to instill a new culture or social technology in people who aren't already familiar, our target audience.