We seemed to uncover our own version of dunbar's number with groupsize in trying to hold a group discussion with more than about 11 people very quickly we break off into two smaller groups.
This is a well-known result from organizational psychology where meeting with more than 12 people just don't work. I first read about this in Christopher Alexander's 'A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction'. A quick google returns e.g. this: http://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl151.htm
to clarify: by uncover I mean; we confirmed its existence by noticing it ourselves, then someone mentioned it by its name and we looked it up and found so many useful pieces of information.
We've been running regular, well-attended Less Wrong meetups in London for a few years now, (and irregular, badly-attended ones for even longer than that). In this time, I'd like to think we've learned a few things about having good conversations, but there are probably plenty of areas where we could make gains. Given the number of Less Wrong meetups around the world, it's worth attempting some sort of meetup cross-pollination. It's possible that we've all been solving each other's problems. It's also good to have a central location to make observations and queries about topics of interest, and it's likely people have such observations and queries on this topic.
So, what have you learned from attending or running Less Wrong meetups? Here are a few questions to get the ball rolling:
If you have other specific questions you'd like answered, you're encouraged to ask them in comments. Any other observations, anecdotes or suggestions on this general topic are also welcome and encouraged.