How about a monthly meetup thread, in the main session, to include:

• Recaps of meetups in the past month

• Planning of future meetups / polling for "who'd be interested?"

This would declutter the front page while still making meetups proeminent enough so that most visitors would notice them.

And if a meetup (or "community" or "meta") subreddit is made in whihc meetups are organized, there could still be a monthly summary thread in the main section.