How about having a hobby of doing something useful, but unpaid?
For example, I found people doing nature-protecting activities to be a nice company. Specifically, there is a place in Slovakia with some unique flowers, which require some work to do so they survive. Originally the flowers adapted to side-effects of some agricultural activities, but those are not longer done; so the volunteers simulate the activities. It is a work that can be done by dozen people in two or three days, so if we make it a week, we have a time reserve for case of rain, and we have some free time to talk.
To me this seemed like a great filter -- it filtered for having free time, willingness to do a volunteer activity, willingness to go away from the computer... and also the people who started this were great, and then it attracted similar people.
I am aware that from sufficiently abstract point of view it demonstrates having time and money (so we can do volunteer work instead of working to survive). But it still seems that signalling by doing something useful attracts different kind of people than e.g. signalling by buying expensive consumer goods.
Protecting nature was just a specific example; perhaps a good one because it requires no special skills. But any kind of volunteer work could have a similar effect.
diegocaleiro said this in Research is Polygamous:
It made me think of the recent post in Main on How to Build a Community. And reflect a bit on how, while I've lived pretty much exclusively online for the last ten years, the lack of meatspace social contact is finally beginning to annoy me. So here's a question for the group: Not how does one build a community, but where and how does one find existing communities that are worth joining? And what are some examples? Not counting LW itself and its tributaries.
A few things I've tried or will try, in no particular order:
Mensa. Didn't work out terribly well, largely because I seemed to have very little in common with anyone else there. Apparently intelligence alone is an insufficient filter.
Geek conventions. (e.g. Dragoncon) I'm a giant flaming unrepentant geek, so I get the feeling of being among my own kind, and selecting for passion seems to work better than selecting for intelligence insofar as finding interesting people goes. The sheer size of the crowd makes getting at the people who are actually doing awesome things difficult, though.
Makerspaces. For those that haven't heard the term, these are a sort of shared lab for private individuals. I actually became aware of these through item 2. Seems promising and it's the next thing I intend to look into, within the next few weeks. Unfortunately the nearest established one, like the nearest LW meetup, is downtown through murdertraffic; a 2-3 hour round trip.
I suspect, but have no significant evidence, that universities containing graduate schools would also be a good bet. But I'm long out of college (I dropped out, for irrelevant reasons) and have no wish (or money, or time) to go back. I occasionally apply for jobs at the closest such place to me, but haven't had a hit yet and I'm unsure I would want to move downtown anyway. I do get the impression that many here are undergrads or graduate students, so opinions on whether that route may be worth pursuing are welcome.
Beyond that? I don't know. There don't seem to be many communities that both select for being awesome and are accessible to anyone who cares to be awesome. I've found that social reinforcement for doing cool stuff helps a lot. I don't like that fact very much, but I had better find a way to use it.