Another point that might make you feel better about attending meetups: Speaking as a person who attends and arranges meetups, there's a variety of ways someone can contribute to the goodness of a meetup or community, even just by showing up. There are lots of LWers who I'm glad are there, and not all of them are accomplished. Some of them are really nice, some of them have interesting things to say, some of them call me out when I'm rationalizing, some of them give me backrubs.