If its not too far from SD I'd like to go. I'm in North County San Diego (Carlsbad) mentioned for purpose of calculating center of mass.
I'm coming from North Hollywood and can take passengers to the Ihop and back. Contact me at lukeprog [at] gmail if you need a lift.
I'll be there. I'll be driving from Torrance and can give a ride to anyone who happens to be in that area or along the way.
This comment is intended as a parent post for talking about possible locations. For reference:
We have met at Westwood Brewing Company a few block south of UCLA.
We have met at Platt Campus Center on campus at Harvey Mudd.
We have met at an IHOP about a mile from UC Irvine.
I think the center of mass of people who are likely to attend (excluding people from San Diego) is somewhere around Anaheim.
Suggests and comments from people who know the los angeles metropolitan region better than I do (or whose attendance is conditional on the location being closer than X to them, for a small value of X) are appreciated!
I've made an inquiry about a room at Chapman University in Orange, not far from Anaheim. If and when I hear more, I'll post.
My first thought in that area was a conference room at the Cerritos municipal library. It's a surprisingly nice location, but they charge, and I think the rates are unnecessarily high:http://menu.ci.cerritos.ca.us/cc_fees.html
Very cool! Even if we don't end up there this month there's a good chance that a meetup will happen there within a couple months.
There are enough people in the region between Santa Barbara and San Diego that I suspect that eventually (as people come out of the woodwork based on probabilistic exposure to one or another meetup announcement) we can have several smaller cozier "local meetups" plus larger region wide meetups near the center of our collective mass... which could easily end up near Chapman :-)
Chapman officially will not work for this weekend, but remain open to inquiries in the future. preferably with as much lead time as possible.
I'm reminded that "Southern California" is really big, in terms of just plain area. Thanks for all your effort.
If there's no better basis for choosing than the most convenience for the most people, my vote is for the IHOP near UCI, which is super-convenient for me. If it's there, I could come; if not, I'd very likely have to miss it.
I'll make a weak vote for the IHOP near UCI. It's easy to get to, has free parking, and seemed to work reasonably well for the last meetup.
I can offer rides from San Diego and back. Send me a PM with contact info and we can work out details.
A meetup in Southern California will occur on Sunday December 19, 2010. The meetup will start around 3:30PM and run for at least 2 hours and possibly 4 or 5. Anna Salamon and Yvain are very likely to be in attendance, as well as people from the last few meetups who may have projects to talk about, if are people are interested. Bring guests if you like. The location of the meetup will be...
...at the IHOP across from John Wayne Airport, about a mile from UC Irvine.
For those interested in carpooling: (1) driver needed in Santa Barbara (please comment if you can make it!), (2) driver available in San Diego, (3) driver available in Lake Forest, (4) driver available in Torrance., (5) driver available in Huntington Beach.
The format for past meetups has varied based on the number of attendees and their interests, at various points we have either tried or considered: paranoid debating, small group "dinner party conversations", structured rationality exercises, large discussions with people sharing personal experiences with sleep and "nutraceutical" interventions for intelligence augmentation, and specialized subprojects to develop tools for quantitatively estimating the value of things like cryonics or existential risk interventions.
Apologies for the short notice. I was trying to call and email around to see what people's winter holiday schedules were like and wasn't sure if this would come together. Based on one-on-one conversations I think we'll have pretty good turnout and interesting stuff to talk about!