Sayeth Jasen:

This is an excellent opportunity to announce that I recently organized an OB/LW discussion group that meets in NYC twice a month. We had been meeting sporadically ever since Robin's visit back in April. The regular meetings only started about a month ago and have been great fun. Here is the google group we've been using to organize them:

http://groups.google.com/group/overcomingbiasnyc

We meet every 2nd Saturday at 11:00am and every 4th Tuesday at 6:00pm at Georgia's Bake Shop (on the corner of 89th street and Broadway). The deal is that I show up every time and stay for at least two hours regardless of whether or not anyone else comes.

I've been meaning to post this for a while but I don't have enough Karma...

A couple thoughts:

  • We're trying to build a community here, and meetups are wonderful, wonderful things. I would recommend that you all follow Jasen's excellent example and see whether OB/LW meetups are happening in your area, and if not, what you can do about that. I'd even suggest an if-you-build-it-they-will-come mentality. We don't really know how many voiceless readers there are for each active commenter. Even if you know of no other LW commenters in your area, try making an announcement that you'll be at such-and-such a place and see what happens.
  • The karma system is all well and good, but if you have something of high, obvious value on your hands, like, say, regular LW meetups in a major city, you should feel absolutely free to pester one of us high-karma folk (we live in a convenient bar off to the side) to post it on your behalf. It seems plausible that there should also be a monthly thread in which low-karma folk can post these things as comments and high-karma folk can repost them as top-level posts. What say we?

New to LessWrong?

New Comment
6 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 2:39 PM

Thank you for posting this!

Now I feel bad about not spreading the word sooner...but better late than never I suppose.

So far, attendance has ranged from 4 to 8 people per meetup. If enough people are interested in meeting regularly we might have to switch venues. I had a good experience at the Moonstruck Diner during another meetup, so that would probably be my second choice:

http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/moonstruck-diner/

It was quiet, cheap, had a large empty dining area at the back and they left us a lone to talk for over four hours. If anyone has any other suggests, feel free to post them here or on the google group.

I hope to see more of you all in the future!

Meet ups sound really cool. How many people have you been pulling at the last few?

I wonder how many Swedish readers there are. A meetup in Stockholm or Gotheburg would be kind of nice.

[-]Uni13y00

I'm a Swedish reader. A meetup in Stockholm would be great!

We could all just mark ourselves on a map like Frappr, that way we'd know where it was worth organising meets.

Cool! Recently moved to NYC and would love to participate in these meetups.