Thanks for stepping up!

Even if the format of each week's meeting is to be a dinner get-together at first, I still think it would help to give some of the weekly meetups a theme, as discussed in Cosmos's case study. The themes could be very simple and easy at first; maybe you could announce a non-high-minded conversation topic or icebreaker that will help people get to know each other.

I am a little concerned that weekly meetups which are utterly without topic might drop below many people's 'urgency' threshold and cause them to simply stop coming at all -- there's no particular need to come this week; I can always come next week, etc.