If Scott is only posting the meetup times and dates on Aug 25th, the first week of September seems too early to schedule a meetup without leading to a significant number of people to already have plans.
Also worth noting, if you are organizing a meetup anywhere where Jews live, Sept 15-16 and Sept 24 should likely be skipped over due to the high holidays.
In case anyone lives somewhere off the beaten path and is interested in potentially meeting other ACX readers, it may be worthwhile to post your "meetup" here, even though nobody may show up, so you can be googleable in the future.
I travel a lot and while travelling in less conventional places, I always google to see if there are any ACX meetups/readers in the place I am visiting.
If there are any ACX readers in Tunisia, please reach out!
Nope: LessWrong will automatically create an event for everything on the ACX Everywhere list around the same time the full list gets published on Astral Codex Ten. If there's already an event created that I know about, they point at that instead of creating a duplicate.
For those in the Boston area (yes, I know there's a tradition of meetups there, especially in Cambridge, and I also know that someone called "Ed" according to the spreadsheet who is already planning a meetup there, but...)
I've filled out the form to very tentatively host a meetup at the MIT campus on Saturday, September 9. If needed, I'll relocate it to Newton instead which is my hometown (if so, spot me in the park at the heart of Newton Centre). Please feel free to prod me to attend either my own meetup or the official™ meetup in the area, since I failed to do so last year.
The rule of thumb I've been using is two meetups within half an hour of each other should merge, and two meetups more than an hour apart should be separate, and then between that there's a grey area that gets figured out case by case.
I'll probably try and have Boston and Cambridge merge. Having another in Newton sounds good though! (It's over an hour by public transit, and lots of Boston locals don't drive.) I don't see a form submission from you, but I think I still have your email from last spring- I'll get in touch!
I went to Philly last spring; it was closer to a low-key party than a professional networking event. There was a table with some board games, a table with a running sociopolitical debate, and a table with dim sum.
Thank you, Scott. You were wonderful at our (West LA) meetup, and people (regulars in our Wed group) really appreciated how you made an effort that night (with a pretty big crowd) to go around and try to talk to as many people as you could -- and then talked to us as a group for anybody who had questions. So...I/we can also understand why it might be exhausting!
I did not know about these and I’m overjoyed to learn there’s one close to me. Time to grab my board games and Magic the Gathering decks and see what happens.
So I'm hosting a meetup again. (3rd yr.) And I'll send out emails to the few people who have come previously. (I always invite some family, so we've always had at least a foursome.) So my question is; why do we have to wait to post dates and times? The sooner the better, no? I'd be happy to change the time... maybe even the date. (Java Center, Western NY.)
If the question is why are me and Scott waiting to post the big announcement, it's because there's still people adding new meetups in new places. I'm basically going to be collecting meetups and formatting them appropriately right up until the announcement post gets made, and I'm sure some people are going to message an hour after that post asking if it's too late.
If the question is why local organizers should wait to post their announcements on the local channels, mostly that's in cases where multiple people will offer to run one in the same city. (I think Boston is at four.) When that happens I usually introduce the different organizers to each other or just pick by experience/enthusiasm, and let them know only one is going to be announced in the big list. That's unlikely to happen with Java Center.
I am attempting to organize a meetup in in Westlake, TX which is a suburb of Dallas. My assumption is that someone who is hopefully more experienced will have organized one for Dallas as a whole. However, I also hope that my particular portion of the metroplex (Southlake, Grapevine, Roanoke, Denton, Keller, Alliance, etc.) has handful of people interested in an event which does not neccessitate 30-45 minutes of driving each way on a weekend evening. If anyone else is in this area I would love to collaborate and hear suggestions.
Also, to those of you who have experience in hosting these events. What methods of pre-event communication and coordination have you found most helpful? For myself I think a group text would be the method I would be the least likely to miss details in, and it doesnt seem problematic assuming there aren't more than ten or so people in the loop. I'd appreciate any adivce you can give.
I'm the sole Dallas organizer and have ours scheduled. Sadly, none of our group live out in those areas (at least as far as I know). I use Google Calendar for pre-event comms and it works well. Happy to chat in private about my experiences as organizer!
I've found email to be my personal favourite, since functionally everyone has an email address, and it's easy to search. Meetup dot com continues to draw in new members through some kind of organic search offering, and as a professional web developer I must admit their SEO is fantastic. Group texts are fine for small groups but get unwieldy fast.
For principle, email lists. For effectiveness, Meetup dot com.
For the Bay Area, would it be helpful to have a limited number of meetup cities? We already have SF, Oakland, and San Jose. Adding more cities in between is likely to split the audience. Wdyt?
My rule of thumb has been, if cities are within half an hour of each other they should merge, if they're more than an hour from each other they should stay separate, and in between is case by case.
That puts San Francisco and San Jose as clearly separate (google maps tells me they're about an hour and a half apart) and far enough that another half way between them might still be in the grey area of maybe. You're splitting the audience for a big meetup, but if a big meetup kickstarts a smaller regular meetup then you probably aren't splitting that audience. I used to drive three hours to get to the big Boston meetup before I lived there, but for something I'd do once a week my limit was more like forty minutes. My understanding from locals is that if you live in San Francisco, you're not excited about going to Oakland for a weekly meetup and you'd rather have one closer. If Fremont and San Rafael volunteered, I'd be happy to put them on the list and see how many people showed up.
That said, I am the Meetup Czar, and if my wildest ambitions succeeded there'd be as many meetups as there are say, church services on a random Sunday. I'm Meetups Georg and may be an outlier who should not be counted.
Your current meetup schedule [A] seems to be in violation of your stated rule of thumb, which includes several Bay Area meetups many of which are within 30 mins of each other:
I think the only ones within 30 minutes of each other are San Jose and Sunnyvale.
Google Maps tells me Berkeley to San Francisco is about 40 minutes, putting it in the middle ground. Since I met a couple of people at Berkeley last spring who expressed they were from San Francisco and wanted something closer, this seems fine.
Google Maps tells me San Francisco to Sunnyvale or San Jose is about an hour, putting it as worth its own spot. Likewise, Google Maps says it's about an hour and fifteen minutes from Berkeley to to Sunnyvale or San Jose.
Berkeley and Oakland are duplicates of each other- that is, they describe the exact same meetup. I do the duplicate line in a few other places, usually when someone might not search for the right city but the two are very close. (For instance, New York City and Manhattan are well within thirty minutes of each other, but there was concern someone might not look for Manhattan when trying to find the New York City meetup.)
So that leaves San Jose and Sunnyvale. Those are different meetups, and they're much closer than I'd usually go for, so they're in fact not following the rule of thumb. What happened? The answer is basically that Sunnyvale got scheduled much earlier, then the organizer who usually ran San Jose got in touch much later and asked if the regularly scheduled thing could be mentioned on the blog, and I shrugged and said sure. It's a rule of thumb for social hangouts, not an iron law upon which fortunes depend.
If your priority is going to the one meetup that will have as many people as possible, that's probably going to be the one in Berkeley since Scott is planning to be there. If that's not your priority, I'm a little curious what your goal is?
Sorry, I didn't realize that Berkeley and Oakland were duplicates - thank you for clarifying! My original goal was to decide whether or not to host an additional meetup in the Peninsula somewhere half-way between SF and San Jose, but that's no longer relevant, so at this point it's just curiosity and perhaps informing the same decision next year!
Looking forward to hosting more meetups in Miami and around south Florida!
South_east_ Florida! 🙃
re: scheduling
If Scott is only posting the meetup times and dates on Aug 25th, the first week of September seems too early to schedule a meetup without leading to a significant number of people to already have plans.
Also worth noting, if you are organizing a meetup anywhere where Jews live, Sept 15-16 and Sept 24 should likely be skipped over due to the high holidays.
I came here to say the same thing about avoiding Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
In case anyone lives somewhere off the beaten path and is interested in potentially meeting other ACX readers, it may be worthwhile to post your "meetup" here, even though nobody may show up, so you can be googleable in the future.
I travel a lot and while travelling in less conventional places, I always google to see if there are any ACX meetups/readers in the place I am visiting.
If there are any ACX readers in Tunisia, please reach out!
Will fill out form later, but we’ll make one happen again in Christchurch, New Zealand!
I'm looking forward to it!
For the “RSVP on LessWrong”, do I need to go in and create a LW event?
I think you're *exactly* right on RSVP'ing on LessWrong is supposed to work.
Nope: LessWrong will automatically create an event for everything on the ACX Everywhere list around the same time the full list gets published on Astral Codex Ten. If there's already an event created that I know about, they point at that instead of creating a duplicate.
Great, thank you!
For those in the Boston area (yes, I know there's a tradition of meetups there, especially in Cambridge, and I also know that someone called "Ed" according to the spreadsheet who is already planning a meetup there, but...)
I've filled out the form to very tentatively host a meetup at the MIT campus on Saturday, September 9. If needed, I'll relocate it to Newton instead which is my hometown (if so, spot me in the park at the heart of Newton Centre). Please feel free to prod me to attend either my own meetup or the official™ meetup in the area, since I failed to do so last year.
The rule of thumb I've been using is two meetups within half an hour of each other should merge, and two meetups more than an hour apart should be separate, and then between that there's a grey area that gets figured out case by case.
I'll probably try and have Boston and Cambridge merge. Having another in Newton sounds good though! (It's over an hour by public transit, and lots of Boston locals don't drive.) I don't see a form submission from you, but I think I still have your email from last spring- I'll get in touch!
Fiiiine, I'll try to attend both (although Newton and Cambridge are about half an hour away by car or so so it's still kind of a grey area anyways).
Don't feel like you have to- I'm the meetup czar, I'm a little bit of a meetup-maximizing robot. You're right that Newton is in the grey area.
I just submitted the form!
I will organize a meetup in Bangkok, Thailand if anyone at all replies and says they are (or will be) here!
Is there typically alcohol at the meetups? Is it more of a party or networking event? Anybody in here go to Philly meetups in the past?
I went to Philly last spring; it was closer to a low-key party than a professional networking event. There was a table with some board games, a table with a running sociopolitical debate, and a table with dim sum.
Whether there's alcohol present or not depends on the local venue and organizer.
Thank you, Scott. You were wonderful at our (West LA) meetup, and people (regulars in our Wed group) really appreciated how you made an effort that night (with a pretty big crowd) to go around and try to talk to as many people as you could -- and then talked to us as a group for anybody who had questions. So...I/we can also understand why it might be exhausting!
Not saying I will host one, but does Hermann Park sound like a good place in Houston? Looks like they allow alcohol, but it isn't mandatory.
Now I want to know the venues that have mandatory alcohol.
Most comedy clubs have a 2 drink minimum.
Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaY4zoQsNiQ
Great, I missed the last meetup in Bremen, but I hope it is hosted again and this time I will definitly come around!
Nobody has signed up to do Bremen yet, but nothing stops you from volunteering either :)
Tentative event in Madrid (Spain) created for Saturday 23 September 2023 at 11:00 in El Retiro park.
LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/Cn6YH4EiggefDAgWS/acx-everywhere-autumn-2023-in-madrid-spain
Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/effective-altruism-madrid/events/295190256/
Will be picking a place/date in Bordeaux soon (might take into account suggestions…)
I did not know about these and I’m overjoyed to learn there’s one close to me. Time to grab my board games and Magic the Gathering decks and see what happens.
I'll tentatively do one in Tampa, Florida ('Midwest Florida').
I'd appreciate suggestions for venue options! A few years ago, the meetup here was at a café, which was fine.
Oh hey, good timing, I was about to put out the call for the Paris meetup.
Put in a submission with the form instead :) Right now I see one in Toulouse but nothing else in France.
I've posted it on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/iC2qxWtcio4ABGrk4/acx-paris-meetup-august-11-2023
So I'm hosting a meetup again. (3rd yr.) And I'll send out emails to the few people who have come previously. (I always invite some family, so we've always had at least a foursome.) So my question is; why do we have to wait to post dates and times? The sooner the better, no? I'd be happy to change the time... maybe even the date. (Java Center, Western NY.)
If the question is why are me and Scott waiting to post the big announcement, it's because there's still people adding new meetups in new places. I'm basically going to be collecting meetups and formatting them appropriately right up until the announcement post gets made, and I'm sure some people are going to message an hour after that post asking if it's too late.
If the question is why local organizers should wait to post their announcements on the local channels, mostly that's in cases where multiple people will offer to run one in the same city. (I think Boston is at four.) When that happens I usually introduce the different organizers to each other or just pick by experience/enthusiasm, and let them know only one is going to be announced in the big list. That's unlikely to happen with Java Center.
Is there anyone at all in or near the Sarasota-Bradenton, FL area?
I am attempting to organize a meetup in in Westlake, TX which is a suburb of Dallas. My assumption is that someone who is hopefully more experienced will have organized one for Dallas as a whole. However, I also hope that my particular portion of the metroplex (Southlake, Grapevine, Roanoke, Denton, Keller, Alliance, etc.) has handful of people interested in an event which does not neccessitate 30-45 minutes of driving each way on a weekend evening. If anyone else is in this area I would love to collaborate and hear suggestions.
Also, to those of you who have experience in hosting these events. What methods of pre-event communication and coordination have you found most helpful? For myself I think a group text would be the method I would be the least likely to miss details in, and it doesnt seem problematic assuming there aren't more than ten or so people in the loop. I'd appreciate any adivce you can give.
I'm the sole Dallas organizer and have ours scheduled. Sadly, none of our group live out in those areas (at least as far as I know). I use Google Calendar for pre-event comms and it works well. Happy to chat in private about my experiences as organizer!
I've found email to be my personal favourite, since functionally everyone has an email address, and it's easy to search. Meetup dot com continues to draw in new members through some kind of organic search offering, and as a professional web developer I must admit their SEO is fantastic. Group texts are fine for small groups but get unwieldy fast.
For principle, email lists. For effectiveness, Meetup dot com.
For the Bay Area, would it be helpful to have a limited number of meetup cities? We already have SF, Oakland, and San Jose. Adding more cities in between is likely to split the audience. Wdyt?
My rule of thumb has been, if cities are within half an hour of each other they should merge, if they're more than an hour from each other they should stay separate, and in between is case by case.
That puts San Francisco and San Jose as clearly separate (google maps tells me they're about an hour and a half apart) and far enough that another half way between them might still be in the grey area of maybe. You're splitting the audience for a big meetup, but if a big meetup kickstarts a smaller regular meetup then you probably aren't splitting that audience. I used to drive three hours to get to the big Boston meetup before I lived there, but for something I'd do once a week my limit was more like forty minutes. My understanding from locals is that if you live in San Francisco, you're not excited about going to Oakland for a weekly meetup and you'd rather have one closer. If Fremont and San Rafael volunteered, I'd be happy to put them on the list and see how many people showed up.
That said, I am the Meetup Czar, and if my wildest ambitions succeeded there'd be as many meetups as there are say, church services on a random Sunday. I'm Meetups Georg and may be an outlier who should not be counted.
Your current meetup schedule [A] seems to be in violation of your stated rule of thumb, which includes several Bay Area meetups many of which are within 30 mins of each other:
1. Berkeley
2. Oakland
3. San Francisco
4. San Jose
5. Sunnyvale
[A] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/meetups-everywhere-2023-times-and
I think the only ones within 30 minutes of each other are San Jose and Sunnyvale.
Google Maps tells me Berkeley to San Francisco is about 40 minutes, putting it in the middle ground. Since I met a couple of people at Berkeley last spring who expressed they were from San Francisco and wanted something closer, this seems fine.
Google Maps tells me San Francisco to Sunnyvale or San Jose is about an hour, putting it as worth its own spot. Likewise, Google Maps says it's about an hour and fifteen minutes from Berkeley to to Sunnyvale or San Jose.
Berkeley and Oakland are duplicates of each other- that is, they describe the exact same meetup. I do the duplicate line in a few other places, usually when someone might not search for the right city but the two are very close. (For instance, New York City and Manhattan are well within thirty minutes of each other, but there was concern someone might not look for Manhattan when trying to find the New York City meetup.)
So that leaves San Jose and Sunnyvale. Those are different meetups, and they're much closer than I'd usually go for, so they're in fact not following the rule of thumb. What happened? The answer is basically that Sunnyvale got scheduled much earlier, then the organizer who usually ran San Jose got in touch much later and asked if the regularly scheduled thing could be mentioned on the blog, and I shrugged and said sure. It's a rule of thumb for social hangouts, not an iron law upon which fortunes depend.
If your priority is going to the one meetup that will have as many people as possible, that's probably going to be the one in Berkeley since Scott is planning to be there. If that's not your priority, I'm a little curious what your goal is?
Sorry, I didn't realize that Berkeley and Oakland were duplicates - thank you for clarifying! My original goal was to decide whether or not to host an additional meetup in the Peninsula somewhere half-way between SF and San Jose, but that's no longer relevant, so at this point it's just curiosity and perhaps informing the same decision next year!