AdeleneDawner and I live together in Durham. Our current apartment is not fit to receive guests, but we plan to move into a house soon (a month or two), and are interested in hosting meetups there then. (Including food provided by yours truly.)
We are moderately unlikely to bestir ourselves to visit more distant places (we don't have a car) but depending on projected attendance could possibly take a taxi; there are a handful of venues within walking distance that we might trek to given nice weather if it's important for some reason that we have a meetup sooner rather than later.
If a meetup is scheduled such that I'm able to come, I can provide the service of ferrying the #3 LW contributor (and guest) in my Helpful Prius.
Little constraint. I am currently without a day job. I have or cover childcare for a good number of appointments, but my schedule currently does not compress into any description smaller than itself. IOW, pretty much anytime is good.
Well, early mornings seem pretty reliably bad recently, at least. Afternoon would probably work best for something soonish, assuming my sleep schedule keeps moving forward at the recent rate.
I be interested, yo. Word.
I live in NE Raleigh near Triangle Town Center but can travel all around the area.
Small restaurants at Brier Creek tend to be decent meetup venues (my wife's scifi book club meets at Noodles & Co) and that's geographically centrally located.
You'd be the fifth, and I'd say five is certainly worth it, and even optimal for certain kinds of discussion. Cool!
I recently asked Alicorn about this as well, it seems like the time is ripe. According to Louie's comment in a previous thread with the totals of site visitors from each city, it looks like at least 9000 were in the Triangle area. I'm in Chapel Hill and likewise would be willing to put fliers up. Furthermore, if there is enough interest I would love to help organize an earlier meetup before Alicorn's venue opens up.
I also know people in the Triangle's Atheist/Agnostic social meetup as well as the Triangle Freethought Society, and the Secular Student organization at UNC. Have there been any experience reports about advertising for "outsiders" to join the meetups?
So it looks like we have enough interest to have a meetup, even before Alicorn/AdeleneDawner get their new place setup. So lets recommend some times/places and go from there.
mutterc mentioned Brier Creek. As he mentioned it is centrally located and has some good spots for meetups. Probably a good area for this first meetup. Alicorn mentioned some venues near her that could be used as well. Both of these seem like good ideas to me.
Scheduling for me: As I said in the original post, it is easier for me to attend during the week, but given 2 weeks advance notice I could meet up on the weekend as well.
I started a Google doc to gather info and do a bit of planning in a central location, you can access it here.
My emphatic suggestion for venue, if we meet before we have a private residence available, would actually be the Morrisville Outlet Mall. It rarely has crowds and has a huge open food court area with plenty of seating, usually very empty. Food is there if anyone wants, and while the acoustics are kind of bad in such an open space, I don't think it would be much of a problem with only 6-10 people.
I think that's everyone then, assuming Ade's agreement speaks for Alicorn as well, and hwc originally proposed the date. I'll write up a first meeting post and put it up soon.
This does sound good. I'll give it one or two days for everyone to agree and then post it on the main page!
Bad acoustics may be problematic for me, since I'm not awesome in the auditory processing department to begin with, but that venue sounds pretty good otherwise, and if it turns out to be a significant problem we can always try someplace different next time.
I work normal hours, and would be willing to meet on a weeknight. I'm usually occupied Friday night to Sat morning, but other weekend times are good.
I'm currently only semidiurnal and won't make it to anything in the morning, or that requires me to be awake in the morning. Other than that, I'm up for any time or place that mutterc can provide transportation to, as that immensely simplifies things.
This post's primary intent is to gauge interest and try to find a possible meeting place.
I will commit to showing up at whatever place we decide on, but I am usually only around during the week. (Though given enough time in advance I could plan for one on the weekend)
The RTP area has three research universities and a fairly large population when taken as a total of the three cities, so hopefully we have enough people. I can also post fliers in several departments at North Carolina State University if people think there would be benefit in that.