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Ensure you are prioritizing having a successful experience at your club fair, as these are some of the most important hours of the whole semester!

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1. Importance of club fairs

Most universities have a club or activities fair every semester/quarter/term where students go to learn about what extracurricular activities they can get involved with at their university. For many AI safety groups, those few hours of the fair are the few most important hours for new students to find out about your club. We can’t stress enough how important it is to get this right. If you are limited on time, this is the most important event to prioritize.

This is generally because:

1. That fair is a unique opportunity to access many students at once.
2. Students at the fair have a unique attitude - they are explicitly looking for new & exciting things to get involved with.

For these reasons, we think you should focus on making your activities fair go really well. This means investing a good chunk of your resources towards the fair, since it is so important compared to other events and programs.

2. Getting a place at the fair

One big failure mode for the activities fair is not being able to have a stall there! Make sure you find out well in advance (during the summer, the earlier you can find out the better) how spots are secured. Some steps you might want to take: (i) find out who organizes the fair and contact them; (ii) find out when signups open; (iii) find out what is required for signups; (iv) on the same day signups open, register your stall (sometimes places run out!). If they do run out/you can’t register, we recommend you go to the club fair and chat to people who may be interested in AI safety, e.g., those who are running booths for societies that might be AI safety-related.

3. Competing for mindshare

The first thing you will notice while attending the fair is how many other groups there are. At many large universities, there tends to be dozens to hundreds of organizations tabling.

The experience of attending one of these fairs as a student is quite overwhelming. Firstly, most students will find many different organizations that they’re interested in. Additionally, most pitches will start to blend together the more organizers a student interacts with.

When picking which organizations to checkout, students are strongly influenced by what the organization does, they are also influenced by many other factors, including but not limited to:

• The quality of the pitch they hear. You have about 30 to 60 seconds to catch their attention. Can you also explain what makes your group special in addition to covering the basics of what you do?
• The friendliness of representatives from the group/welcoming atmosphere of the group.
  • It doesn’t hurt to dress nicely
• Do they see themselves represented by students who are tabling for the club? For example, it’s much easier to attract certain demographics of students, like CS students, if there is at least one CS student tabling for the club.
• The initial appeal and branding of the organization (banners, posters, visuals). You’d be surprised how influential this can be in establishing your group as a serious and organized club, even if you are brand new!
  • Having big graphics/text matter in crowded spaces!
• Social proof (if other students seem to be curious/enthusiastic about the group). This is incredibly important! There are too many groups for students to properly evaluate which are worth their time. Many students use social proof as a shorthand for who they should spend their time talking to. Additionally, it’s very challenging and intimidating for students to come speak to you if no one else is. If you're tabling, start any conversation, even if it's just with members of your club, to provide social proof to others that your organization is worth engaging with.
  • Additionally, make your portfolio / 'record of work' easily accessible. If you have made demos, executed on any projects, produced publications/white papers, meeting pictures, put them on the table/poster!

4. How to prepare