This sounds like you want to be a "bicycle dispatch rider" (I hope, I found some meaningful translation). I had two friends working in that area, and their job description matched 100% to what you describe you want.
However, you must be able to handle the street-stress. Sometimes I think they are suicidal in how they drive through the city.
The term you're looking for is "bike messenger", I believe.
I actually did consider that, but I believe you have to provide your own bicycle.
My goals in searching for employment were 1) near zero commitment, 2) something that gets me out of the house, 3) the ability to have weekdays off when I want them. Joining a temp agency has worked out well for me. I work three weeks out of four, bring home enough to pay my startlingly low rent and expenses, and put about $600 a month into the bank (if I don't decide I need another wardrobe update).
Even majority of readers participated to these meetups every time, it doesn't matter. Quoting the about-post: ""Promoted" posts (appearing on the front page) are chosen by the editors on the basis of substantive new content, clear argument, good writing, popularity, and importance."
Meetup-posts do not contain new, important, argumentative content. It's meta-level discussion, meta that it bit by bit trying to take over the whole LW. I don't want LW that exists for posts about LW. Meetup-posts are not the only thing driving LW towards uselessness, but as far as I can tell, having those posts in the front page is by far the most visible and obvious warning sign.
I disagree.
Meetups bring out lurkers and infrequent posters, such as myself, and make LessWrong more than just some intellectual exercise online. At the last Berkeley meetup I was in a discussion that touched on the following two issues with the same group of people.
Most lurkers admit to not reading the discussion session, but number at least half of any meetup group. (Maybe, but doubtfully, this is Berkeley/SF Bay specific)
We were generally interested in some recent comments that had been made about the NYC meetups incorporating an instrumental rationality/support aspect, and some present desired more frequent and more specifically social meetups.
I admit that a rather large and disproportionate amount of front page posts are about meetups now, so here's a solution that I think may please everyone. Some designated meetup Super Organizer collects info on meetups planned for the next month, then publishes a monthly front page promoted post with info on all upcoming global meetups. Individual meetups could still be posted in the Discussion section so as to have their own threads, and obviate the need for a designated Super Organizer, instead being handled something like Open Threads where one is posted anew as necessary.
Edit: And as an added bonus, no one has to hack any code.
How do you approach the matter
I gave a fairly successful talk at the Center for Inquiry's Student Leadership Conference this last summer on Bayes' Theorem and cognitive biases that was really a trojan horse for introducing fellow young atheists to the idea of rationality as an actual area of study.
one-to-a-small-roomful, with the general public
There were about sixty student group leaders of college and highschool atheist organizations in attendance.
how far can you expect to get?
Quantifying "fairly successful", I was approached afterward by at least six people who were interested in discussing my presentation and learning more. At least four more told me that they appreciated my presentation later that day or weekend.
Heavier than air flight? Yeah like that will work. Let me just get in my lead balloon.
I don't see much merit to this idea.
Publicly committing to attending to compensate for my natural tendency to forget.
Friday would indeed work better for me.
Ditto. Again.
Edit: I have a friend who is interested in attending and would be able to make it on Friday as opposed to Saturday, as well.
I will try my darnedest to be there, although this is literally the worst day of the entire month for me.
This holds for me as well.
For some reason I'm awfully bad at bringing people together. There's something about the task that I can't seem to grasp, no matter how much I try and fail. Is there anyone on LW who started out with no talent for this, but managed to improve through hard work?
Yes. I tried and failed to run a student social/special interest group for a while, interspersed with low- to medium-quality leadership conferences on occasion. After a year (of the school variety, so nine months) of running weekly meetings and hosting lecture events I got to be pretty decent.
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I'm optimizing for free time and mobility. Using this expense calculator I found that my monthly budget runs between $1065 and $1845. Some options I'm considering:
Has anyone tried any of these? Can you offer advice if you have?
Living in the Bay Area now, I was also mightily intrigued by that comment. I've taken some entrepreneurship courses and have some experience running organizations of relatable (I imagine) complexity, but no real idea where to begin, nor the resources to start a venture on my own. I'd love to talk more about this and possibly decide on a plan to do some intensive research though.
As an aside, if you're optimizing for free time and mobility I'm not sure starting any sort of business is the right way to go about that.