The main problem for me is that the "nearest meetups" section just isn't useful. The nearest one to me on the list is quite literally on the other side of the continent.
The funny thing is, I happen to know that there are some very close meetups coming up. There's one weekly about a two-hours' drive from me in Irvine. That one doesn't appear on the splash page, but one in the Bay Area (about 8 hours away) does, which means that the "nearest meetups" list doesn't actually have much to do with spatial proximity (or if it does, it's not in a way I personally have been clever enough to find useful).
It seems to me that if there's going to be a prominent list of meetups, it needs to involve at least one of three properties in order to be useful to readers:
Otherwise it just looks like a random list to me. What good is it for me to know about a meetup in Tortuga, DC, Cambridge, Australia, and India? I guess if I were traveling widely that might be nice to know about, but if I were traveling widely I would be more careful to look up details of what occurs when rather than just relying on a sidebar that, apparently, excludes several more local options.
I think it would be really helpful if there were some kind of standard submission form for meetups so that the system knows when and where each one is as well as how frequently recurring (with options to adjust times to account for changes, kind of like Google Calendar does with recurring appointments).
I should be quick to add, by the way, that it's really clear that the programming team has put a lot of work into this site and have given it a lot of thought. Sorry if I seem at all unappreciative. Thank you for all you've done and continue to do!
We're contemplating adding a notice somewhat like the discussion area notice ("This part of the site is for…") when there is an upcoming meetup close (200km?) to you.
I'm reluctant to bold the city names, since everything we do to make one thing in the sidebar more prominent reduces the prominence of everything else in the sidebar (think Las Vegas), and it's not clear to me that meetups deserve more prominence than they have now, compared to everything else.
I don't think the bold green you use for the first line of recent comments would be too much, but I can see that it's a judgement call.
There are currently quite a few meetups listed, perhaps it would be better to only show a meetup or two (assuming the nearness ranking works)? This would focus attention on the relevant meetups and also perhaps steal less attention from everywhere else.
Right now 'nearest meetups' lists 5 meetups in the sidebar. If this was reduced to listing 1 or 2 meetups (the very closest) then this will focus more attention on the meetups that are shown as well as stealing less attention from other content. I think there probably are not too many people who need are going to pick from 5 meetups and those that do can check out the meetup section.
I just registered that I'm not looking at the meetup list to see whether there's anything in my area-- the letters are too small and faint.
Are other people skimming past the meetup list, too?
If it's a general problem, I recommend bolding the city names.