The mission of the North Oakland LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome. Yes, that includes you, if you're reading this. We meet at 6:15, but the official topic doesn't start until 6:45 to accommodate stragglers, and even later arrivals are also welcome. RSVPs are never required.

This week's topic is Projects. Bring a project (a website, a story, a knitting project, a business plan, or anything else...) and we'll co-work. At the beginning we'll each talk about what we're working on. You can choose to work on your own, or to team up with others if you'd like to learn about their work or offer help. There's usually one room for quiet work and one for talking and collaboration.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

About the Meetup

The North Oakland meetup is intended as a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome, and RSVPs are never required.

We meet every Tuesday in Oakland at 6:15, with a rotating variety of topics but don’t generally start the meetup topic until 6:45-7:00 to accommodate stragglers. Often there is a food delivery order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

I am borrowing both description and format from the long-running but now long-lapsed San Francisco meetups. They were great at this for many years, and were an excellent 'on-ramp' for people who had moved to the area for one reason or another but hadn't made connections with the local community, or even each other. (Myself included!) I hope to renew this, a little closer to the local center of gravity in South Berkeley/North Oakland.