If we were really going to modify code, the ideal system would be to enter your location on your profile if you want to attend meetups, and allow emails to be sent to people nearby when a meetup is posted in the area. This has the added benefit of letting LW readers who do not go on the site every week find out about them. Although, I just skip over meetups which are irrelevant. a large amount of coding would be required for a miniscule improvement in the site.
The number of meetup announcements on the main blog has been increasing. Though it's reasonable to try to get meetups high visibility to increase the chance that people who are nearby see the announcement, the posts themselves are content-free.
How difficult would it be to, instead of promoting meetup announcements, tag them "meetup" and put a "meetups" section in the sidebar, similar to "recent comments" or "recent posts"?