INTERESTING: We put the moderated suggestions for things to do up on the projector and there was interest but we didn't really implement any of the suggestions. My guess is that the top rated activity suggestions involved self-revelatory content and we just didn't know each other well enough to feel really safe talking about that in front of a large group full of new people. If we keep having meetups with the same crowd I think self-revelatory activities will work better, but we might have needed more "ice breaking" kinds of activities?
I'm just one data point, but that wasn't stopping me. I just couldn't think of anything worth spending everyone's time on when unsolicited. Maybe if we had broken into smaller groups for that it'd have been over the 'worth saying' threshold, and the groups could get together with whatever interesting stories/patterns they uncover?
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.