I think its a reasonable solution to people not wanting to make an account or also the occasional anonymous post. I have used it once or twice to make separate comments.
But I should add that you can see a list of your nearest meetups if you set your location on your own account.
Edit: holy hell the person who posted all the OT comments here is really annoying and should make an account and stop link-dropping. If the account is being abused that bad we should shut it down and I would change my vote in the poll.
From the upvote to downvote ratio it looks like more members think the posts by Username in the open thread are worthwhile - at the time of writing they are mostly among the higher top-level comments on this week's open thread, and several have sparked at least a bit of subsequent discussion in the form of follow up comments.
True, they're only links (with quoted text) but this doesn't particularly strike me as abuse of the Username account.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.