GOOD: We had some people from the previous meetup and also lots of new people. The turnout pattern was roughly consistent with the theory that the next couple meetups located in different parts of Southern California will pull in new local people to each one, while people who have been to previous meetups will be more willing to travel. If we keep up the meetups, in new places around Southern California, I think we'll build up a group whose size, cohesion, and diversity will significantly exceed what we've seen at the first two meetings... which were already better than I was initially hoping for :-)
The second LessWrong meetup for Southern California will happen on Saturday September 25th, 2010! The meetup will start at 1PM and probably run for 4 or 5 hours in the Platt Campus Center of Harvey Mudd College. Thanks are due to the Harvey Mudd Future Tech Club for the location.
We will be meeting in a conference room with tables, chairs, whiteboards, and a projector. Based on the July SoCal LW Meetup we discovered that the most interesting thing was to have small group conversations but that turned out to be tricky in a pub. This time we're optimizing for conversation, but pizza will almost assuredly be ordered and there will be free cookies and soda!
Last time several people brought interested friends. Also some people who had been reading a long time but had never commented before showed up (only about 60% of us had LW logins) and this seemed to work pretty well. It was a very friendly group :-)
For travel planning purposes, you should probably be aware that the time and location was specifically planned to be ~10 blocks north of the Claremont Metrolink Station, 15 minutes after a train arrives there from the hub at LA Union Station. Train schedules can be searched here. Walking directions from the Metrolink Station:
For those arriving via car there is a parking lot directly behind the building (it's covered with trees on the Google maps aerial view). There should be plenty of spots open on a Saturday. Also, look for carpooling comment threads, here for Santa Barbara, here for Orange County, here for San Diego, and here for Pasadena/Glendale.