51 Comments

If anyone here lives in the Boston area and wants to attend the Newton, MA meetup (which I’ll be running), please bet up https://manifold.markets/duck_master/attendance-at-the-newton-ma-acx-mee as well so I feel happy.

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Also Scott and Skyler: In future editions of Meetups Everywhere, it’d be better to sort the USA meetups by state first, and then by city, since the USA is both the most popular country for meetups by far as well as being geographically enormous.

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It annoys me that I can't use the same sort for everywhere, since not all countries have equivalents to states and even when they do people don't seem to use them. Canada has provinces and seems to use them similarly to the US, Japan has prefectures and doesn't use them (which to be fair from an ACX perspective there's basically just Tokyo) but Italy has administrative districts instead. I don't pretend to understand how the UK is divided and just put whatever the local organizer put.

I guess it isn't actually important that every country be sorted the same way. I'm still going to be annoyed about it though, and I find myself empathizing with those administrators from Seeing Like A State.

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Aren't most of the meetups in the US? Perhaps you should be less egalitarian and treat your primary customers... like they are primary customers.

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The sorting feedback has been noted and I'll see about next time.

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> I don't pretend to understand how the UK is divided and just put whatever the local organizer put.

If I understand correctly it works like this:

1. The UK.

2. One of the “constituent countries” (ie England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland).

3. Some kind of intermediate division (county? shire? IDK, probably not important for your purposes).

4. The actual city or town.

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The UK is subdivided into counties, which has *TREMENDOUS* importance and significance when it comes to determining cricket allegiances, but I imagine at-most limited relevance to ACX. (It goes without saying that ACX must therefore be in the wrong and cricket in the right.)

Politically-speaking, counties look and function a bit like super-tiny, super-cute states, with a level of self-governance that functions a little bit like the toy steering wheels you can fit to the passenger side of your car to amuse your child. They're probably also more confusing than states: historic counties are different to political counties are different to cricketing counties... you could say the latter *puts on sunglasses* have their own boundaries...

Wouldn't advocate subdividing by county, in the UK. Too few meetups and too annoying to decide on a universal subdivision criterion. Personally, my preferred algorithm would be something like, "Countries with >X meetups get subdivided; subdivisions with >X meetups get sub-subdivided." If somebody with lots of free time (and a little bit of GIS software) wanted to get really fancy, then a really whiz-bang algorithm like "any region with >X meetups in <Y hours' drive gets subdivisions regardless of its political boundaries", but I suspect that probably wouldn't be worth the effort...

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Doesn’t Scotland have significant delegated powers making them functionally more independent than England & Wales?

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Sorta. It does have devolved powers, but it doesn't really make sense to say it's more independent than England, when by-and-large England - well, London - is the centre of UK politics and the UK economy. Your other example, Wales, is better!

The above are countries, though, not counties.

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From my perspective the question is "What's the equivalent to California in the string 'Berkeley, California, USA'"?

One reasonable answer is that there isn't really an equivalent but also we don't need the division because there's ten UK meetups to eighty-five USA meetups. USA meetups get sorted region/country/state/city, everyone else gets sorted region/country/city. Alternately, I convince the United States to un-unite with each state becoming an independent country, thus restoring balance to my precious spreadsheet.

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Also,.larger cities are unitary authorities and not run by the county are in.

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hello!

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hellO!

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The UK list is short enough to not be confusing however you sort us. Do whatever makes the other regions easier.

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I can do even better than doing this in future editions. Now this edition is sorted by state, for US only!

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Particularly liked, "Linux users, I assume you can figure this out". Smashing microhumour Scott-ism nerd-love type thing!

Minor typo on the Bristol, UK entry; meeting point is off Broadmead, not Broadmean.

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Typo should be corrected!

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Broadly speaking aren’t people from Bristol known to be a little mean? 😉

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Haha!

Yes, people from Brizzle are broadly-speaking, but not as broadly-speaking as those from Somerset.

(To answer the actual question, for the record: there are places in the UK stereotyped as mean (Yorkshire, for example); the stereotype for Bristol is that the city is trapped in some sort of permanent stasis in the 1990s rave era.... everybody drives around in lowered Vauxhall Novas whilst wearing baggy neon-coloured t-shirts, smoking rollies out of the window, and playing Underworld choons much too loudly on the stereo. The stereotype.... may not be entirely un-earned...)

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I agree with duck_master on the sorting question, and was going to comment the same myself. There are 86 meetups in the US, and 10 just in California. And especially in the Bay, we have no central city -- I saw Berk and SF, but would have missed Sunnyvale if I weren't trying to count. "Search for your city" doesn't really work when our city is administratively divided into some 100 polities. Much easier if I can just go to California, and see them all there (even easier if Bay \subseteq CA, but there aren't enough to justify that (yet)).

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The feedback on sorting has been noted and now has its place in my project postmortem

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Thank you!

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Here's a manually sorted list of meetup places in the US, somewhat arbitrarily/unscientifically grouped by region for even greater convenience. I spent the past hour on this, so please make good use of it. (Warning: this is a long comment.)

NEW ENGLAND

Connecticut: Hartford

Massachusetts: Cambridge/Boston, Newton, Northampton

Vermont: Burlington

MID-ATLANTIC

DC: Washington

Maryland: Baltimore, College Park

New Jersey: Princeton

New York State: Java Village/Buffalo, Manhattan/New York City, Massapequa, Rochester

Pennsylvania: Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh

Virginia: Charlottesville, Norfolk, Richmond

West Virginia: Charlestown

MIDWEST

Michigan: Ann Arbor, Jackson

Illinois: Chicago, Urbana-Champaign

Indiana: South Bend, West Lafayette

Ohio: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo

Wisconsin: La Crosse, Madison, Stone Lake

SOUTHEAST

Alabama: Huntsville, Tuscaloosa

Florida: Fort Lauderdale, Gulf Breeze, Miami, West Palm Beach

Georgia: Atlanta

North Carolina: Asheville, Charlotte, Durham

Tennessee: Memphis

SOUTHWEST

Arizona: Phoenix, Tucson

Arkansas: Fayetteville

Colorado: Boulder, Carbondale, Denver

Louisiana: New Orleans

Missouri: Kansas City, St. Louis

Nevada: Las Vegas

New Mexico: Taos

Texas: Austin, College Station, Dallas, Houston, Lubbock, San Antonio, Westlake

Utah: Logan, Salt Lake City

NORTHWEST

Alaska: Anchorage

Minnesota: Minneapolis

South Dakota: Sioux Falls

Oregon: Corvallis, Eugene, Portland

Washington State: Bellingham, Redmond, Seattle

CALIFORNIA

(subdivided)

Bay Area/Silicon Valley: Berkeley/Oakland, San Francisco, Sunnyvale

Central Valley: Davis, Grass Valley, Sacramento

Southern California: El Centro, Los Angeles, Newport Beach, San Diego

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I've already found the ones relevant to me and I'm too lazy to look closely, but Minnesota is Midwest, not northwest, Colorado and Utah are West, not southwest, and Louisiana and Arkansas definitely aren't southwest either. Anyways, grouping by regions I don't think is too useful. I'd just stick to the states, alphabetically.

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Anyone in Ukraine?

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Dang, Skyler. You have to list my meetup as (near) Buffalo NY. No one knows where Java NY is.

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Might want to add "New York City" as a redirect to "Manhattan", ha.

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Thanks for this Sky!

There is a glitch in the Mumbai listing: the less wrong link is also redirecting to the google group. Here's the correct LW link

https://www.lesswrong.com/events/Yj9MHguuKHaznp4bo/acx-meetups-everywhere-fall-2023-1

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Should be fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out!

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Yes, looks good! Thanks so much :)

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Hee hee hee... The evil robots will never crack our clever [at] and [dot] code for hiding email addresses in plain sight!

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Can I just say that explicitly specifying "children welcome" for those that did is hugely appreciated! More people do this please (that is, if kids are ok).

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Comment noted. I'll look at putting it in the advice given to organizers for next round maybe.

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Also, FYI (and sorry for being late), but kids are more than welcome at my own meetup (in Newton, MA)! I'm pretty young and still feel like a kid myself.

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The Boulder meetup on this page says Sept 27th, but the LW event says 23rd (which is what Josh told me today). I'm emailing him but also leaving this comment in case anyone else is confused.

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Alex is correct.

The date for the Boulder meetup was wrong. The correct date is Saturday, September 23. Not Wednesday the 27th

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Thank you for pointing it out- should be updated now.

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Why not meetup in Vienna this year! Please somebody organize one, otherwise I'd do it reluctantly

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I assume the question was rhetorical, but just in case it wasn't there isn't a meetup in Vienna currently scheduled because nobody from Vienna told me about one.

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Could we still add one, Skyler? Meeting in the park would be better than nothing

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Bryan Caplan was here recently and some people showed up

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We can still add one- either send me the text block with the key information (name, email, location, coordinates, date, time) or fill out this form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd10vtoPl5bFZsujxIr8bLd-_Yp-NKAmmHtubdlaT359sJ-nw/viewform)

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Alright I just filled out the form

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You should be showing up on the list! (You didn't actually say Austria and the plus code coordinate was the short code, but I made an educated guess.)

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