Posted on behalf of Mike Howard:
This is a call for preferences on the proposed Bay Area meetup to coincide with the Singularity Summit on 24-25 October. Not just for Singularitarians, all aspiring rationalists are welcome. From the replies so far it's likely to be in San Jose.
Eliezer, myself and probably most Summit attendees would really rather avoid the night between the Friday Workshop and Saturday Summit, so maybe either Saturday evening or sometime Thursday or Sunday?
Please comment below or email me (cursor_loop 4t yahoo p0int com) if you might want to come, and if you have any preferences such as when and where you can come, when and where you'd prefer to come, and any recommendations for a particular place to go. (Comments preferred to emails.) We need to pick a date ASAP before everyone books travel.
I'm sorry I haven't commented here earlier, I've been getting the emails but I think blog comment threads are a poor way of communications, here are some points that I wished I had made earlier but may still have some validity.
I don't like Saturday for the following reasons: 1) It will be easy to round up a bunch of people for dinner and discussion after the summit is over without any online correspondance. Last year I hung around (whatever the hosting building was) for a while after the event had died down and Peter Voss, Sam Adams and about 10 other people and I went to a nearby restaurant. It wasn't that difficult to organize at all, it happened almost spontaneously.
2) My brain will be fried after listening to all the speakers that are lined up, thinking about what they said will lessen my ability to hold high level intellectual conversation, I'd prefer to have some personal time to reflect on the speakers before charging into a discussion.
My proposed solution: get everyone's email and move this conversation to that medium, yeah it will lead to a lot of extra emails but it would be easier than scrolling through a bunch of blog comments every now and then, most people check their email everyday but do not check the comments here everyday. Mike says we have 20 people but in the email I received from him had only eight names on it.