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neeravkingsland15y00

Michael,

Hope all is well - just saw that you're making a trip to New Orleans. I live in the city and would be available to meet on the 14th. However, I'm definitely not an expert of any sort - yale law grad who is working to transform the city's public schools into a decentralized charter school system. But I'm an avid reader of MR / OB / LW and always interested in learning more. Also, would be interested in connecting with other New Orleanians with similar interests - the town can be somewhat intellectually isolating at times.

Take care,

Neerav

MichaelVassar15y00

So, I'm happy to try to meet with you and others over the next few days, but can I have a phone number or email to reach you? Otherwise I don't know how to do so.

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Less Wrong / Overcoming Bias meet-up groups

by MichaelVassar

30th Oct 2009

1 min read

13

Hi from Michael Vassar, the president of SIAI. With my wife and Singularity Summit co-director Aruna, I'll be traveling over the next few months to meet with rationality and singularity enthusiasts throughout the U.S. Specifically, I'll be in Boston from November 14-18, Philadelphia from December 1st to 10th and December 15th through January 4th, New Orleans from December 11th to 14th, Orlando on January 5th and 6th, Sarasota on January 7th through 12th, and in Tampa on the 11th if there is substantial interest in a meet-up there.

Please comment if you are interested in attending a meet-up in any of the cities in question and we can start planning.

I hope to find that there are thriving communities of rationalists in each of those cities already, but I'm traveling there to try to seed their precipitation from the local populace. If things go really well the groups and their respective cities will be on SIAI radar and who knows, maybe eventually there will be a Singularity Summit near Tomorrow-Land, a global catastrophic risk conference by the New Orleans levies, or a FAI extrapolation dynamics exploratory workshop near Independence Hall.

13

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[-]saliency15y40

I love the idea of LW/OB meetups.

In fact I showed up for one listed in NYC at Georgia's Bake Shop (corner of 89th st and Broadway) but no one else did :(

Sorry we missed you! Last week we had to change locations (Georgia's Bake Shop has become too small) and at the moment we are still looking for a suitable venue for general gatherings. Are you subscribed to the mailing list? Please do!

Also, you mentioned the meeting place is "listed"... do you mean somewhere here on the main blog or on the Wiki? I was wondering if people were using the wiki to list meetup groups/locations, so we can prevent such difficulties as you experienced.

[-]saliency15y20

I got the location from the google calendar posted a few weeks ago.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1am/lw_meetup_google_calendar/

The link you included does not resolve correctly for me.

(Thanks Robin)

[-]AdeleneDawner15y10

This link should work. The other one has some extra text - probably intended to be a tag of some kind - that fouls it up.

Yeah, it was intended to be the link title attribute--in Markdown, of course, but I didn't close a quote around what was supposed to be the title attribute's value.

I'd really like to be able to preview comments here. It would prevent me from further embarrassing myself.

[-]Douglas_Knight15y10

I'd really like to be able to preview comments here. It would prevent me from further embarrassing myself.

If you care so much not to have a * on the date, you can create a draft top-level post and post test comments there. Yes, a preview would be better.

Comment text is formatted with full justification) - because the link is too long to fit on the rest of the line, the text before it is spread out to meet the right margin.

I see. Thanks for the feedback! I'll see if we can get that fixed for next time.

ETA: I give you Karma for helpfulness.

[-]AndrewKemendo15y40

I am currently working on a google map API application which will allow LW/OB readers to add their location, hopefully encouraging those around them to form their own meetups. That might also make determining the next singularity summit location easier.

If there are any PHP/MySQL programmers who want to help I could def use some.

Neat idea! I missed this first time around, and so posted a comment on the open thread asking about creating some central regular-meetup info repo. Same general desire to connect people with meetups.

I know a little PHP (can create forms, WordPress themes/plugins and such, but I use other languages more often). Let me know how it's going and if I can be of any use.

[-]whpearson15y00

Not google maps but http://www.frappr.com/ would do.

[-]AndrewKemendo15y00

I looked into that but it lacks the database support that would be desired from this project. With LW owning the xml or php database, closest match algorithms can be built which optimize meeting locations for particular members.

That said, if the current LW developer wants to implement this I think it would at least be a start.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov15y00

Sounds like something that likely has already been implemented somewhere.

[-]AndrewKemendo15y00

I thought so too - however not in the implementation that I think is most user friendly.

Or developer-friendly, at any rate--but I must admit, frappr's AFLAX interface isn't the most stable on Linux.

St. Petersburg here, so I'm excited about hearing from Mr. Vassar in Sarasota, Orlando, and possibly Tampa.

[-]MichaelVassar15y00

Lets make concrete plans for Sarasota then, OK.

[-]MichaelVassar15y00

I'll be happy to see you while there. Hopefully more people will write on this thread and contribute to the decision about where to meet.

[-]Danny_Hintze14y00

I'm in Phoenix, would be great to try and have one here.

[-]MichaelVassar15y00

I'll surely be in Phoenix eventually.

[-][anonymous]15y00

I would be interested in the Philadelphia meetup as well.

[-]Effectuate15y00

I would be interested in the Philadelphia meetup as well.

[-]Peter_de_Blanc15y00

We're trying to organize one now. How would Wednesday, December 16th work for you?

[-]neeravkingsland15y00

Michael,

Hope all is well - just saw that you're making a trip to New Orleans. I live in the city and would be available to meet on the 14th. However, I'm definitely not an expert of any sort - yale law grad who is working to transform the city's public schools into a decentralized charter school system. But I'm an avid reader of MR / OB / LW and always interested in learning more. Also, would be interested in connecting with other New Orleanians with similar interests - the town can be somewhat intellectually isolating at times.

Take care,

Neerav

[-]MichaelVassar15y00

So, I'm happy to try to meet with you and others over the next few days, but can I have a phone number or email to reach you? Otherwise I don't know how to do so.

[-]Peter_de_Blanc15y00

I would show up for a Philadelphia meetup.

[-]MichaelVassar15y00

OK, suggest a day, or let others on this thread do so.

[-]jimrandomh15y00

I propose 2pm Sunday, November 15th for the Boston meetup. The last meeting ended up at at Carberry's at 74 Prospect St Cambridge, MA (1.5 blocks northeast from the Central Square T station), so I propose we start there.

I would be interested as well. Could you email me about any plans once they are finalized (my email address is my username at google's email service .com).

Thanks

[-]MichaelVassar15y00

OK. Scheduling it. Can you email me contact info?

The last meeting started at the Starbucks in Central Square but moved to the cafe in Harvest down the street. I think we should go to Harvest again but the locations are all so close together that it doesn't matter that much.

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