I'm glad that you're looking out for people, I just don't know who these particular people are! You must have mental models of people which I don't have; send me a PM about what sort of person would be less likely to attend after reading both your post and my comments.
Personally, the big relief for me when I came to a meetup was not that I knew too little, though that was the fear of which I was aware. Instead, the big relief was that people were allowed to have fun, that Seriousness was optional. That made my sense of relative ignorance seem less important as well. Humor seemed like a good way to communicate this aspect of the meetups, I thought.
As for KW, I haven't been around there much, but I'll see what I can do :-)
ETA: Any Late-comers, We did end up in the VLSB.
Hi all, it seems we've reach that time of the month, that time when we get together and be rational in Berkeley. As usual, we'll meet at the Starbucks at 2128 Oxford Street at 7 pm, then move into the atrium in the Valley Life Sciences Building on the Berkeley Campus. There'll be an expedition to get food, so don't feel that you have to eat before hand.
I want to make a special plea to the lurkers on lesswrong to come, I promise no one will think poorly of you if you're still in High School, aren't a member of Mensa, or haven't read the sequences. This is a social event where we get together with people who like rationality, not a way for the shadowy cabal of beisutsukai to puzzle out the secret of quantum gravity. Even if you only just linked here from Methods of Rationality, I and everyone else here wants to get to know you.
Hope to see you all there!