Last autumn we organized meetups in 85 different cities (and one ship!) around the world. Some of the meetup groups stuck around or reported permanent spikes in membership, which sounds like a success, so let’s do it again.
For most cities: If you’re willing to host a meetup for your city, then decide on a place, date, and time, and post it in the comments here, along with an email address where people can contact you. Then please watch the comments in case I need to ask you any questions. If you’re not sure whether your city has enough SSC readers to support a meetup, see the list of people by city at the bottom of this post. There may be more of us than you think – last year we were able to support meetups in such great megalopolises as Norman, Oklahoma and Wellington, New Zealand. But I would prefer people not split things up too much – if you’re very close to a bigger city, consider going there instead of hosting your own.
If you want a meetup for your city, please err in favor of volunteering to organize – the difficulty level is basically “pick a coffee shop you like, tell me the address, and give me a time”; it would be dumb if nobody got to go to meetups because everyone felt too awkward and low-status to volunteer.
For especially promising cities in the US: I am going to try to attend your meetups. My very tentative schedule looks like this:
Friday 9/20: Boston
Saturday 9/21: NYC
Sunday 9/22: Philly
Monday 9/23: DC
Thursday 9/26: Ann Arbor
Saturday 9/28: Chicago
Sunday 9/29: Austin
Tuesday 10/1: Portland
Wednesday 10/2: Seattle
Friday 10/4: Fairbanks
Thursday 10/10: Berkeley
Friday 10/11: Orange County
If you are in one of these cities and want to host a meetup, please schedule it for the evening of the relevant day. If that’s impossible, let me know and I might be able to reschedule. I will announce these ones on the blog, and in the past that’s meant they can get very big (100+ people in the biggest cities) – you might want to hold it in a house, park, or classroom (not a cafe or small apartment). If you have a great location but need money, email me and I might be able to help.
Small-print rules for organizers
1. In a week or so, I’ll make another post listing the details for each city so people know where to go.I don’t guarantee I’ll have the post with times and addresses up until September 9, so please choose a day after that. The weekend of September 21st and 22nd might be one good choice.
2. In the past, the best venues have been ones that are quiet(ish) and have lots of mobility for people to arrange themselves into circles or subgroups as desired. Private houses have been pretty good. Same with food courts. Cafes and restaurants have gone okay, as have empty fields (really). Bars don’t seem to have worked very well at all.
3. Usually only about a quarter of people who express interest actually attend. If your city has fewer than 20 people on the big list, don’t offer to organize unless you’re okay with a good chance of only one or two other people showing up.
4. If more than one person volunteers to organize, I’ll pick one of them. Priority will be given to people I know well, people who have organized meetups before, and (especially) an existing SSC/LW/EA meetup group in the city. If you run an existing SSC/LW/EA meetup group and you want to organize your city’s SSC meetup, please mention that in the post so I can give you precedence.
5. If you have an existing meetup group, you can just tell me what you’re already doing and when your next meetup is. But try to have the one you list here be some kind of “welcome, SSC people” meetup or otherwise low-barrier-to-entry. And please give me a firm date and time commitment instead of “tell people to check our mailing list to find out where the meeting will be that week”.
6. If you’re formally volunteering to organize a meetup, please respond with an unambiguous statement to this effect, the exact address, the exact time, and the date (+ contact details if possible), preferably in bold. I’m not going to count someone as offering to organize a meetup unless they do this. Please don’t post “I hope someone agrees to organize a meetup in my city”. Just offer to organize the meetup! Again, please include an exact time, exact date, and exact address with your offer to host. Please don’t post vague speculation about how you might want to host at some point – just offer to host and give me the information I need. If it turns out there’s someone better, don’t worry, they’ll also offer and I’ll choose them.
7. Mingyuan is Director Of Meetups and might be asking you some questions; I vouch for her and you should give her any information she needs.
Thanks, and see (some of) you soon!
I will host a meetup for Seoul, South Korea
Place: O’sulloc Green Tea near Gangnam subway station
Time: 28th September 2pm. I am flexible about this since I anticipate a very small crowd. Contact me if this time doesn’t work for you.
Contact: curtis95112 (you-know-what) gmail dot com
The big list says that there are precisely zero interested SSC readers in Seoul. This is clearly false, since I am an interested reader in Seoul who never had a reason to make my presence known because there are clearly no interested SSC readers in Seoul. So this is an attempt to provide everyone with a reason. I would also appreciate it if people who can’t/won’t make the meetup contacted me too, possibly anonymously, because it would be fascinating if nobody replied and I were literally the only SSC reader in a city of 20 million.
Also, a suggestion for Scott. Could you include a country of residence question in the next SSC survey separate from the “country you most identify with” question? I think there would be a big difference for non-English speaking countries.
Is there anyone else in Humboldt?
There seems to be a plethora of places called Humboldt:
Humboldt City, California
Humboldt, Illinois
Humboldt, Iowa
Humboldt, Kansas
Humboldt, Nevada
Humboldt, Minnesota
Humboldt, Nebraska
Humboldt, Ohio
Humboldt, Portland, Oregon
Humboldt, Pennsylvania
Humboldt, South Dakota
Humboldt, Tennessee
Humboldt, Wisconsin
Humboldt County, California
Humboldt County, Iowa
Humboldt County, Nevada
Humboldt Township
Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Nevada
Humboldt City, Nevada
Humboldt Park, Chicago
Guevea de Humboldt, Oaxaca, Mexico
As well as an asteroid and lunar crater by that name. Perhaps you should clarify.
Sorry, and thanks.
Humboldt County, California.
That list is two years old now, might be a good idea to include this question again in the next survey and see if the number of interested people has changed since then.
Agreed. This especially effects the midwest, which has a bunch of sort of close cities that are at or right below the 20 person threshold.
I organize the Los Angeles LW/SSC Meetup.
My initial thought was to do it on Wednesday, October 9th, but if we were to do it on the 16th, would you be able to attend, Scott? I don’t expect that you’ll be in SoCal that long, but figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.
Details (final, except which week’s Wednesday):
Address: 10850 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA – The Wine Bar on the 2nd floor of the Westside Pavilion, right next to the Landmark Theater.
Date/Time: 7 pm, Wednesday – October 9th/16th (TBD – will make a new post confirming which date we’ll use for this, though we have meetups every Wednesday regardless).
Contact info: Discord (https://discord.gg/TaYjsvN), Email (rot13: oboreg.zhfuxl@tznvy.pbz)
Sorry, can only do OC. I was hoping some people from LA and San Diego would come like they have in the past.
We’ll definitely try 🙂
I’ll have the final date ready by tomorrow – thanks for the quick reply!
I can attend either an LA or a OC meetup.
Final details:
Address: 10850 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA – The Wine Bar on the 2nd floor of the Westside Pavilion, right next to the Landmark Theater.
Date/Time: 7 pm, Wednesday – October 9th
Contact info: Discord (https://discord.gg/TaYjsvN), Email (rot13: oboreg.zhfuxl@tznvy.pbz)
I will host a meetup in Barcelona, Spain
Date: Saturday, September 21
Time: 16:00
Place: We meet in Plaça d’Espanya at the big tower closest to Fira. Then depending on the weather we can go to Montjuic or Arenas.
Contact: ana_bcn (at) protonmail (dot) com
I am flexible about everything, since I expect very few people to attend (or even none). I’d like to meet more SSC-adjacent people, so I though this is worth a shot. Feel free to send me an e-mail even if you can’t attend, so that we may catch up at another time.
——
I also offer to organize a meetup in Lisbon, Portugal
Date: Sunday, October 6
Time: 16:30
Place: We meet in the Oriente station in
front of the book fair. Then depending on the weather we can go to Parque das Nações or Vasco da Gama.
Contact: ana_bcn (at) protonmail (dot) com
Feel free to send me an e-mail even if you can’t attend, so that we may catch up at another time.
Edit: clarification.
That’s great to hear! I created a meetup group but we don’t have a lot of members yet: https://www.meetup.com/Lisbon-SSC-Meetup/
We had a meetup yesterday but only two of us showed up. Would you be interested in doing one September 28 or 29?
Contact: rbss081 (at) gmail (dot) com
After discussing with popkin, we settled on the original date for the meeting. You can find the event here:
https://www.meetup.com/Lisbon-SSC-Meetup/events/264483174/
Sydney, Australia
Check out this Meetup with Rationality – Sydney http://meetu.ps/e/.vvmbwpyzmbzb/sqK6x/d
19th sept, 6pm.
Lvl2 565 George St, Sydney
More contact details on meetup.
Pune, India
I wish to organize a meetup at Pune, India.
Tentative Location – Cafe Coffee Day, IISER Pune Campus, Baner
Tentative Date – September 8
Contact – 7rat13 AT gmail DOT com
Please feel free to reach me for anything, including suggestions for alternative date or venue.
Hi halum! I’d like to suggest an alternative date, which is: basically any date later than September 9th (when Scott will be posting the list), because as-is people probably won’t get a chance to find out about your meetup until it’s too late! Maybe September 15th instead? Also, please specify an exact time 🙂 Thanks so much!!
Alright. Given the comment from mingyuan, I would like to reschedule the meetup on September 22. The time is 6 PM IST onwards.
Again, comment below or email me for alternative dates or venues.
I will host a meetup for New Delhi, India
Place: Brown Box Cafe, Shop No. 2,DDA Market,S Block, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi, Delhi 110017
Time: 14th September 5pm. Amenable to other dates/times.
Contact: anujdayal () gmail
Wondering if this could be after the 25th?
Anyone up for Rome, Italy?
Could you reschedule the Boston meeting September 20 is the day of the climate strike protest which I expect at least a certain portion of your readership myself included will be participating in.
I also would prefer it be rescheduled if possible. But the climate strike event ends at 5 pm so it might be feasible to have the meetup afterwards.
An evening meetup is presumably best anyway. At least, for those of us who work full-time…
True; that reason alone should be sufficient
Hi, I organize the Slate Star Codex meetups for Washington, DC. We already have a meetup planned at 7pm on Saturday, September 14th, at 631 D Street Northwest.
Since Scott is visiting our city, we’ll also have some kind of event or meetup on Monday, September 23rd, time and location to be determined but most likely in the same time and place as the other one.
Currently working out what/where/when we are doing stuff for September. In the meantime, join our mailing list if you want to receive an announcement with details once everything is determined.
Hey Robi, if it’s okay with you we’ll only be including the September 23rd meetup on the big list. (Let me know if that’s bad for some reason). Post here when you have the details figured out, and thanks for doing this for the past couple of years!! ^_^
There is a combined Less Wrong/SSC meetup in Melbourne, Australia. The next one will be:
Friday 6th September, from 6pm
Queensberry Hotel
593 Swanston St, Carlton VIC 3053
Contact if you are lost: 0438 869 257
Optional: If you join the Facebook group *Less Wrong Melbourne*, you can respond to the Facebook event, which will be created in the next few days.
Hi Jugemu, thanks so much for this! However, Scott probably isn’t going to be posting the full list until September 9th, which means people won’t have a chance to find out about your meetup. If this is a monthly or weekly thing, can you send along the details for the next regular meetup, and we can advertise that instead? That way you’ll probably get more people to come 🙂
I will host a meetup for Boone, North Carolina if there’s any interest in my lil corner of Appalachia
Place and time TBD, comment if you’re interested and we’ll figure something out.
Or email pyrrhonismus at google’s email service!
Hi there! Is Charlotte close enough for you? I know it’s a bit of a drive, but I also know that when I lived in a relatively sparse area, driving ~2 hours to an event wasn’t very unusual 🙂
I co-host the Philadelphia meetup. Rescheduling for 9/22 should not be a problem. We will coordinate on time and place and update here soon. My email is wfenza@gmail.com.
Would it be super-odd if someone came down from NYC?
I’ve got non-refundable hotels to pull off Six Flags on Saturday, and my rental car is through the Philly train station because I refuse to drive within 50 miles of NYC.
Non weird at all. Come on down!
EA Philadelphia can also help organize the meetup in Philly. Our email is eaphiladelphia@gmail.com
We have a suitable venue for 9/22, but it closes at 7pm. Would 4pm to 7pm be too early for you? You requested evenings, but this is a Sunday.
I’m the other co-host for the Philadelphia SSC meetup. We’ve set a time and place for next month:
Sunday, September 22nd
From 6:30pm
Tir Na Nog Bar & Grill
1600 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
The restaurant is inside the Phoenix Hotel, directly above Suburban Station. We have the entire outer vestibule area reserved.
I’m dmcbriggs(at)gmail.com if you’d like to be added to our contact list. Hope to see you there, especially Scott!
Re. the “big list”, I wonder which city has the largest ratio of “interested people” to its overall population. But I leave the actual work to someone more likely to do it for fun.
Someone did the math on this, and posted a list of cities by “egghead quotient” (ratio of SSC readers in a city who expressed interest in a meetup, to population of that city). I think it’s in the comments section of the followup thread to Meetups Everywhere 2017.
Here’s the post in question. Would be good to get updated SSC numbers to see how the rankings have changed.
Yeah, but he did it with city populations instead of metro areas, which is meaningless. I redid it with metro area populations (interested per 100,000):
Oxford: 7.38
Cambridge (UK): 6.71
Ann Arbor: 6.2
San Francisco: 4
Madison: 3.79
San Jose: 3.45
Boston: 2.95
Seattle: 2.82
Wellington: 2.63
Canberra: 2.62
Helsinki: 2.57
Austin: 1.98
Salt Lake City: 1.88
Washington DC: 1.76
Portland (OR): 1.53
New Haven: 1.52
Dublin: 1.29
Edinburgh: 1.28
Raleigh: 1.25
Ottawa: 1.21
Pittsburgh: 1.2
Denver: 1.16
Rochester: 1.12
London: 1.08
Oslo: 1.06
Chicago: 1.05
Zurich: 0.99
New York: 0.98
Columbus: 0.95
Toronto: 0.94
Vancouver: 0.93
Edmonton: 0.91
Calgary: 0.86
Philadelphia: 0.84
Baltimore: 0.82
San Diego: 0.81
Minneapolis: 0.8
Cleveland: 0.78
St. Louis: 0.71
Sydney: 0.71
Tel Aviv: 0.7
Munich: 0.68
Kansas City: 0.65
Stockholm: 0.64
Milwaukee: 0.63
Berlin: 0.62
Nashville: 0.62
Cincinnati: 0.59
Melbourne: 0.59
Vienna: 0.58
Los Angeles: 0.56
Sacramento: 0.55
Copenhagen: 0.55
Detroit: 0.53
Atlanta: 0.49
Brisbane: 0.49
Cologne: 0.42
Montreal: 0.39
Charlotte: 0.39
Birmingham (UK): 0.38
Warsaw: 0.36
Phoenix: 0.35
Houston: 0.3
Dallas: 0.27
Paris: 0.18
Sao Paulo: 0.05
So college towns and the Bay area dominate, no surprise there. Helsinki’s interesting, being miles ahead of every other non-English-speaking city.
Aww, our little Amsterdam SSC meetup didn’t even rank. I think we had about a dozen people on the contact list, usually more like 4-5 at the meetups, in a city of 800K. We should do a potheads:eggheads ratio.
The school in Ann Arbor is obvious, but which one do you think drives the high ratio for Madison?
From talking to a few Madison people, it looks like it might be related to Epic, a big software-related company headquartered there.
I assumed it was the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
I think it’s probably a combination. Historically there was an EA group at UW-Madison and a basically separate EA group at Epic. The current SSC group skews university-affiliated, especially drawing from the Philosophy department, but that might just be a function of location – Epic and the UW campus are fairly far apart.
As a former Epic employee and Madison resident, this is true. Epic draws heavily from the nerdy/computer interested type and hires almost exclusively in the 22-25 age range- both risk factors for LW/SSC membership.
For some reason it’s amusing to think about how the sprawling virtual tool suite used by basically all doctors and nurses was designed/built by (at least a few) SSC fans.
Western Massachusetts should rank – total population is ~600,000, and we are regularly getting 6+ at meetups–just the meetup list would put us above 2. But it is split among a bunch of little cities.
Any chance Scott would be able to come to Northampton/Amherst area (~ 2 hours west of Boston)? We would organize a special meetup on any day that worked for him.
Western Mass meetup organizer here. I can confirm everything Sam said. Also, Western Mass only adds about 45 minutes if you’re travelling Boston <-> NYC, which is one reason we get some pretty major music acts playing our venues–it makes a good pit stop. Also, I suspect we’d get well more than the usual ~6 if it was announced that Scott was coming! The first meetup got 12 people of whom all but a couple are still on “occasional” status. I suspect almost everyone would come out of the woodwork to see Scott, plus some new faces. And we’re slowly growing all the time in general.
There is a healthy Airbnb situation and I’m sure several readers that’d be happy to put Scott up as well.
It looks like there were 13 from Cincinnati on the big list. I’m in Louisville (hence why I’m not offering to host; don’t think the SSC community is huge here) but would happily travel to any of the cities in a two-hour radius for a meetup (Indy, Cincy, Bloomington, Lexington).
(If anyone is in the area and interested in meeting up, I can be reached at “ajenkneary @ google’s mail service.”)
The whole midwest looks pretty sparse. We will probably have to combine a few cities. I’m in Cincinnati, and I am willing to travel to Indianapolis, Louisville, Columbus, or Lexington.
I’m in the Cincinnati area and would like to meet.
Hopefully Cincy will have enough for a meetup, but if not, you should have options at least in Indy (per Elissa’s comment) and/or Columbus (we have a monthly group in Columbus-details for next month will be up soon).
I’m hosting for Indy on the 21st.
I’m in Lexington and we have a small monthlyish meetup here. We’re doing a meetup on the 22nd; see my comment down below if you’re still interested.
I will host a meetup for Sacramento, CA on September 22, 11 am at Crepeville, 1730 L St Sacramento, CA 95811. I can be reached at amethyst.eggplant@gmail.com.
Slate Star Codex Miami Meetup
Address: Pasion del Cielo, 701 S Miami Ave #350B, Miami, Florida 33130 (Brickell City Centre location)
Date: Saturday, October 12
Time: 5pm
Facebook group link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1931644027057534/
E-mail: eric135033 (at) gmail (dot) com
This group is about two years old. We meet on the second Saturday of each month at 5pm. There are usually 3-4 people at a meetup.
I attended one of these and it was lovely. Highly recommend.
Thanks for the endorsement 🙂
Good luck with the Tampa meetup!
Scott, please reconsider the exact address requirement. Some people, notably me, want to organize meetups at a private residence but would not want their home address on the blog. I don’t think it’s too difficult to ask people to send out an email before being given a personal address.
Not Scott, but I didn’t interpret his instructions as ruling out what you are talking about. It seems more like it’s an edge case he didn’t consider, and is neither inside nor outside the rules. Quite possibly the purpose of “exact address” is just to ensure that you have a definite place in mind. So I would just post whatever details you can while respecting privacy, and if Scott doesn’t like it he can say so.
I had exactly the same reaction so consider this seconded.
Several people did this last year, so precedent says it’s fine.
I Will host a meetup for
Tampa, Florida.
Place: Felicitous Coffee, 11706 N 51st St, Temple Terrace, Florida
Time: Saturday, September 21st, 5:00pm.
My email is danielbporter (around) gmail dot com.
I don’t think there’s been a Tampa meetup, so I’m rather expecting a small turnout. Happy to flex on time/or location.
I’m tentatively down!
I live in Hangzhou, China. I don’t imagine there is any demand for a meetup, and I mostly lurk in any case, but on the off chance there are some other SSC readers here I would be willing to organize.
Is there any interest near Sioux Falls SD?
I live in Sioux Falls. My Friday evenings and Saturdays are usually free.
Scott, could you be persuaded to stop in Pittsburgh on 9/24 or 9/25, on your way between DC and Ann Arbor?
Probably not, sorry 🙁
I will host a meetup for Iowa City, Iowa.
Place: The Java House, 211 E Washington St.
Date: September 15th
Time: 1:00 pm
Contact: potentgamer [at] gmail
I figure that now that the students are back at UIowa, we might have some more SSCers here. The date/time is flexible should people need to fit it into their schedules.
I can host a meet up in Ann Arbor on September 26
Given the Scott-boosted turnout, it might be worthwhile to reserve some larger space thru the university. I will look into that. Unfortunately, that takes a little time, so I can’t commit to a location or time, beyond the event being within spitting distance of central campus, and in some neighborhood of 5 o’clock.
You can contact me at algo2217@gmail.com, my name is Andy.
Suggestion: We did a meet up with both Scott A’s at Pizza House. They reserved a big room for us upstairs which worked fine. (This is not me volunteering to organize though, my probability of coming is only about 50%.)
Cool, let me know when you’ve nailed down the time and place! Also, that’s Petrov Day – maybe you want to do something special? Up to you though 🙂
I used to help host the Miami SSC / LW Meetup, but have now moved to Memphis. I don’t believe there has been a previous meetup here, but I’d like to start one. I’m totally ok if only a couple people show up!
Memphis, Tennessee
Location: French Truck Coffee at Crosstown Concourse.
Address: 1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis, TN 38104
Date: Saturday, October 5
Time: 5pm
Email: michael (at) postlibertarian (dot) com
Directions: It’s in the main Central Atrium of Crosstown Concourse. There are many chairs and tables right in front so we should be able to grab a few.
I will host a meetup for Phoenix, AZ.
Time: Saturday September 21, 2pm.
Place: Lola Coffee Downtown. 1001 N 3rd Ave, Phoenix 85003 – Parking is typically available on weekends, this is also ~5 min walk from the light rail. Contact me if you are coming and I can give you a phone number to help with parking on the day of.
Contact: Ben: Benjamin dot J dot Morin (you know what) gmail dot com
Shout out to my old crew in Dallas!
Austin has an existing combined LW/SSC meetup on Saturdays. For the weekend of 9/28-9/29, we will instead have one on Sunday.
Location: Central Market North Lamar, 4001 N Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78756
Either upstairs on the balcony or outside in the courtyard. Will e-mail the below google group, but we should be easy to spot.
Day and time: Sunday 9/29 at 4:30 (Let me know if this should be earlier or later, Scott)
Contact: [my first initial][my last name][at]gmail.com and austin-less-wrong[at]googlegroups.com
The above information is now incorrect. We will have the meetup on Monday, 9/30, at 6 PM so that Scott Aaronson can attend. Location is unchanged.
Can someone tell me what things (should) happen during a meetup? I would host one but I would like to avoid awkward-silence meetups.
As far as I can tell, the purpose of these meetups is to find like minded humans and build community/social connections with them. Given that it’s slate start codex themed, you could have discussions about SSC posts, much like occurs in the comment section. You can also ask people about what they’re working on, or learning about.
At the Miami meetup I attended once, everyone was interesting and interested, and conversation flowed very naturally. We talked about meditation, and epistemological humility, and somebody’s e-commerce business, among other things.
It’s reasonable to expect the people who are interested in an SSC meetup to be smart, interested in talking to others, and a little weird. Effectively and graciously moderating discussions is kind of a high level social skill set, but even as host you don’t need to assume a lot of responsibility for outcomes. Pick a space, show up, and ask people questions about their interests, and you’ll have admirably discharged any implied responsibilities.
Sorry, but what? They’re just asking what usually happens during a meetup, so that they can get an idea of what kind of implied responsibilities come with hosting one. I don’t think that warrants telling them they shouldn’t be hosting a meetup.
@Jo: From my (extremely limited) experience with these things, having a topic to start a discussion about or some other central thing to serve as an icebreaker can be helpful to prevent the ‘Well now what?’ moment after everyone arrives, but once a discussion starts going it mostly just keeps going on its own.
This seems not to be necessary, true, or kind.
Now, I’m pretty sure it’s true at least, even if it’s not kind. And I think it’s necessary: This guy is thinking about hosting a meetup where he tortures the poor attendees with his stupid planned events. Somebody has to tell him.
Okay, yeah, it was kind of rude. I just wanted to register my opinion that I think free-form meetups are better than planned discussions. I’ve been to some meetups where the conversation was dominated one person (or group of people), and it was super boring, and I was just taking my frustration out on this guy.
And I think that’s a fine point to make.
Your initial comment made unsupportable inferences about OP’s communication and fitness to organize a meetup. It sounds like your first meetup was organized by people who weren’t particularly skilled socially. It’s possible OP here also isn’t skilled – they certainly don’t sound confident in their skills – but they’re literally asking for guidance to avoid making the sort of mistakes you encountered. It’s an unnecessary comment because instead of demeaning them, you could give them guidance.
At risk of putting too many words into this thing – things like this serve to discourage others who read it from trying to host meetups. Nobody wants to be treated unkindly for doing their best, and there are (likely) quite a few shy, anxious humans in the crowd who could be easily discouraged from trying. The risks of people trying and failing are negligible against the benefits of people trying and succeeding.
If it’s your first meetup, a good topic is how you found out about Scott’s blog or LessWrong. If they are interested in one part of rationalist group, it’s fun to talk about others they might not have heard of. Rationalist and Rationalist-adjacent topics that some people haven’t heard about at my meetups included: Effective Altruism, GiveWell, Open Philanthropy Project, AI alignment, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, The Sequences, cryonics. Also people and their writings / podcasts, like Gwern, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rob Wiblin, Robin Hanson, and Julia Galef.
Not saying you should be familiar with all of these topics! Just that you might have heard of one and someone else might not have and you might discuss it.
I wasn’t the organizer, but went to the first Western Massachusetts meetup. For us, just ask people to introduce themselves and let the conversation go from there has worked well. People are interesting–and the kinds of people who read SSC are especially so. At one meetup, only one person had gone to something approaching a “normal” school–so we talked about how our educational backgrounds compared. And so forth.
At the first meetup I attended, one of the participants asked everyone to say one thing that they had changed about the way they think or live based on having learned more about Rationality. I thought it was a pretty great icebreaker.
I’m starting grad school in Vienna next month (in fact, I’m boarding my plane in about an hour flying through Kiev–the price gouging at JFK is the most rage-inducing I’ve ever seen). I cannot host, but if anybody wants to, you have one extra member.
(Yes, I’m aware I was the Chengdu meetup last time. I’m sort of nomadic.)
I would be interested in joining a meetup in Vienna aswell.
My throwaway account is eateriesofub@gmail.com. Drop me a line. Like I said, though, I can’t host.
I will host a meetup for Vienna, Austria.
Place: My flat, located at the beginning of Dornbacher Straße, in the 17th district.
Time: 12th October, 15:00
Contact: koce123223 (dingding) gmail – com
If you want to attend, please email me for the exact address. I will provide some drinks and snacks, but we could also order some food. I doubt we will be more than 5 persons but I’ve never attended (or hosted) such an event, so I’m quite curious how it will play out!
Looking forward to meeting you!
The monthly Viennese Rationality/LW/SSC meetup will take place on
Date/Time: 19th October, 15:00
Address: Kaisermühlenstraße 24, A-1220 Vienna
Location: Meetup room on the ground floor at the back side of the building
Facebook Group: Rationality Vienna (event + directions to location will be announced there)
My Facebook Account: Striving Consistency
Contact EMail: strivingforconsistency ( at ) gmail.com
(Our monthly meetup has been around for more than 6 years now. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you are interested.)
There will be a meetup in Zurich, probably in Oktober. Still picking the exact date.
Is this still together with the lesswrong facebook group, or is there a different way to learn of the meetup date when it is decided?
Thank you a lot for organizing.
Hi Orpheon
You can write to ssczurich@gmx.ch to be added to the mailing list.
Cheers
Do you mean the Rationality Zurich facebook group, the non-geographic Less Wrong 2.0 fan page, or some other group?
Zurich Meetup
Date: October 5th
Time: 15:00
Venue: Kosmos at Lagerstrasse 104
I usually organise meetups in Cambridge, UK but am not there until early October. If someone wants to organise a meetup before 9th October or so, let me know (comment here or email or whatever) and I’ll advertise it on the mailing list. And if anyone organises something in Munich in September I’ll turn up.
If anyone else is in Medellín, Colombia, I’ll happily organise a meetup. Might be a longshot but I see there is/was a group in Bogotá at one point, so who knows!
Hey Rich, it’s Claire! I have no idea if there’s anyone else in Medellín, but I think you should just go for it. As they say, all you have to do is pick a date and time, show up in some cafe, and wait. If no one else shows up, the worst that’ll happen is you spend a couple hours reading a book in a cafe! And I *know* you like reading.
Oh hey Claire! Ha, you make a very good point. Here we go:
Medellín, Colombia
Location: Café Revolución
Address: Carrera 73 | Cq. 4 #10, Laureles
Date: Sunday, September 22
Time: 11am
Email: firstname dot lastname (at) thedeepdish (dot) org
If anyone’s in the vicinity, feel free to contact me to arrange a different time/date – I’m flexible.
Atlanta is having our 10 (or 11th) monthly meet up – more details here https://www.lesswrong.com/events/XEvfb3gpiaZ8aQaeD/ssc-atlanta-september-meetup
Email me if you would like more info.
Hi! Thanks so much for running the Atlanta meetup! I notice that the event you linked to is on September 7th, which is before the date when Scott said he’d post the final list. Would you like to advertise your October meetup instead? Just reply here with the details for that event and I’ll get you listed 🙂
We will be having our next SSC Atlanta Meetup on Saturday Oct 12th at our usual location of
Hodge Podge Coffee House
720 Moreland Ave SE,
Atlanta, GA 30316
I imagine we will be continuing where we left off with the UBI, velocity of money, State legitimacy, probabilities of climate change and whatever we come up with.
I host a monthly meetup in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of NC. All are welcome!
Place: 219 Hood St, Durham, NC 27701
Time: 18th September 7pm.
Contact: willdjarvis (you-know-what) gmail dot com
Our group house hosts the Boston-area SSC/LW meetups at 3pm on the first Sunday of each month. This month we will also have a meetup at 7pm on September 20 (to be rescheduled if Scott changes his schedule).
199 Harvard St Apt 2
Cambridge, MA 02139
(about 8 minutes walk from Central MBTA station)
Contact: boston-lw-organizers at googlegroups dot com
Cool! I will attend (and maybe bring a friend if I can convince him)
Hey Autumnfell,
I’m fairly new to SSC and I’ve never been to a meetup, but I’d like to attend this one. Are the Sunday, monthly meetups at the same location? Anything I need to do or bring to attend?
Thanks,
– PJ
The Sunday monthly meetups are indeed in the same location and you don’t need to do anything in particular to attend.
Registering my interest in a Chicago meetup. There’s 100 people that showed interest on the poll so that’s a decent number, 25 if a quarter really show up. I’m a little surprised not to see any Chicago meetups given the number of people, if there’s something that is planned that I didn’t see let me know. Anyways, I’m moving there for college (UChicago) in the next month and would love to meet some people in the area that have SSC interests/mindset near the college, around Hyde Park, or adjacent areas.
I’m hesitant to suggest a place though because I literally haven’t been to the city yet. If anyone in the area can recommend me places that would work for that number of people and there’s enough interest for a meetup decently close to that area I’d be happy to formally volunteer and do some simple organizing.
I regularly go to a rationality (SSC blog post) discussion group and an EA group near the loop (center city) and I’ve heard tell of active groups at UChicago. I’m sure we’ll all coordinate shortly and get something organized.
Alright, sounds cool. Happy to hear there are active groups in the area. Worst case if there’s not much of a UChicago group then I’m sure your group can host him. Even if it was held over there, doesn’t look like too far of a commute from UChicago on a weekend (though obviously I’d love a meetup super close).
As far as I know the UChicago group hasn’t been active since I graduated in 2017, but the UChicago EA group has become fairly active since then. If you think of it, let me know what you find in terms of rationality groups when you get there, and good luck with college!
I had thought the meetup group was defunct. I used to be co-organizer of the Chicago LW meetup group.
Is there a a mailing list/facebook group or something for these groups?
I currently host a meetup for Dallas, TX and the surrounding area since April. We are a low-structure group looking to meet like-minded friends. Our current mailing list includes 12 people and we average 5-6 showing up in person.
Places and times are posted on LessWrong. Our next meetup is listed here: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/9Rwdah7twvGTxbXFN/dallas-ssc-meetup-6
Please email tayfie@pm.me if interested to RSVP and get group announcements.
I am willing to host a meetup in Indianapolis
Place: ShoeFly Public House, 122 East 22nd Street
Time: 9/21 at 4:00 pm EST
Contact: molybdenumblue (a) gmail.com
I will host a meetup for Minneapolis / St. Paul on Saturday, September 21 at 3PM.
We will meet at The Knoll, 27 Pleasant St SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455 (link is to Google Maps). This is a park on the north end of the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus, not the apartment building of the same name.
Although the forecast looks good right now, in the event of poor weather we may have to relocate – email me at grahamsnumberisbig@gmail.com if you’re interested so I can get a rough headcount and send updates more easily.
Also see the LW post for an editable post that I’ll try to keep up to date if things change.
I tried to respond to this link and I got a message that sending failed. IS this e-mail correct? Unless the problem is on my end.
The email should be correct; you can try maskedtorah at the same domain, which forwards to it. I think I sent you an email when organizing a meetup last year, though, so if you look for an email you sent to a group of people with subject “SSC reader in twin cities” on Monday April 29 at 8:36PM central time that should have my address – let me know if it seems different? As far as I can tell the spelling in the parent comment is accurate.
Update in case anyone is reading this thread not already on the email list: Due to bad weather, we’re relocating to The Purple Onion, a cafe a block away from The Knoll, at the same time as before. See the LW post or email me for more info!
what do you say, Wellington, New Zealand – shall we get the gang back together?
I propose: Glover Park
Saturday 28th September, 3:00pm
contact benwve at gmail dot com
It’s a bit of a drive for me, but I’m keen to head along if its on and if I can.
Hi Alethios,
Send me an email at the above address if you haven’t already and I’ll make sure you’re kept in the loop.
(Long-time reader but only made an account a few weeks ago)
I live outside Seattle, on the north side of Lake Washington (south of Everett). I imagine folks in Seattle proper will organize something there, but I might be willing to organize something in Everett or Lynnwood if there’s interest. What do Scott/others think?
Hi! I’ve organized a Seattle meetup. See this comment for details.
I’ll host for Oklahoma City, OK. (This should be a successor to the Norman meetup for last year, which I had conflicting plans during.)
Place: Del City Library. I’ll be wearing a USS Iowa shirt and hat.
Time: September 21st at 2 PM.
Contact: battleshipbean at gmail.
Please tell me that’s like the Green Bay Packers cheese hat, and not just a boring baseball cap with a print.
Sadly, no. It’s just a baseball cap that says USS Iowa on it.
I can host for New Haven, CT!
Location if the weather is good: the courtyard outside of P&M Market (on the corner of Orange Street + Cottage Street).
Location if it’s raining: Blue State Coffee on Orange Street.
Time: Saturday 9/21 at 4:00 pm EST
Contact: rip.my.inbox at gmail
There’s a blue state on orange street now? They’re taking over everything!
I’ll be hosting for Berkeley, CA, since Scott will be road-trippin’.
Location: Event Horizon, 2412 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Date: Thursday, October 10
Time: 6 PM – 10 PM
Contact: mingyuan at uchicago dot edu
I’m confused. In the blog post, Scott said he’s going to be in Berkeley on 10/10, but here you mention he’ll be road-trippin’.
You’re correct on both counts, sorry that was confusing. What I meant was that Scott will be busy in the weeks leading up to the Berkeley meetup, so it’d be good if he didn’t also have to host it 🙂
I organize the Bangalore LW/SSC meetup. We have a meetup scheduled next month
Venue : Matteo Coffea, Church Street, Near MG road Metro Station.
time : Sunday, 22nd September 4PM
Regular meetup group for a year now, since the last annual meetup post when it started.
email me at m.nihalmohan (at) gmail.com
Copenhagen SlateStarCodex Meetup
Time: Saturday the 21st of September, 19:00
Place: Studenterhuset, Købmagergade 52, Denmark
Contact: soeren.elverlin@gmail.com
This will be our third SSC meetup in Denmark.
Last year, six people attended our meetup in Oslo, Norway. I have already emailed everyone who attended last year; please get in touch if you want to be on this mailinglist. My email is anders at huitfeldt dot net. There is also a when2meet link for scheduling the meetup, at https://www.when2meet.com/?8038590-fjW1E
Thanks Anders, please post here when you’ve picked a date/time and location! 🙂
I run the Portland, Oregon SSC Meetup. We’re having our next monthly meeting on September 8th, 2019. We meet at a private home, so email nwalton 125 at gmail dot com for location details.
If you (Scott) can attend a Portland meetup, I think people would love to have one when you are here as well. Not having thought too much about it, Cartopia on 1207 SE Hawthorne Blvd seems like a good meeting place for that one. Since you said your plans are tentative, I’ll wait on scheduling that one, or asking a lot of people about it, for now.
Hey Noah! I think you should go ahead and schedule the 10/1 meetup concretely – even though Scott said his plans are tentative, most people have been planning around his schedule anyway. And since the September 8th meetup will likely be before Scott posts his list, I think it makes the most sense to just plan something for 10/1, and that’s what we’ll include on the big list. Does that sound okay to you? Just post/reply here once you’ve figured out the details for 10/1. Thanks!! 🙂
Saint Louis, MO
21 September 3pm
Hartford Coffee
3974 Hartford Street
Contact me at littlejohnburidan[at]gmail.
I have a place to stay if you visit from out of town and need a bed.
Anyone interested in having a short slatestarcodex meetup in the San Japan convention (in San Antonio) this Saturday? If so please email me at ssc dot frankgarza dot net.
I will host meetup in Moscow, Russia.
Date: Saturday, September 21
Time: 6 p.m.
Place: Rationality Center Kocherga, 5k2, B.Dorogomilovskaya st., Kievskaya, Moscow, Russia
We host all kinds of rationality related events at Kocherga, including LW and EA meetups. We occasionally have SSC meetups and would very much like to have a regular SSC meetup group, if there are enough people interested.
I can be reached at oknezrob@kocherga-club.ru
We have a regular Less Wrong meet up in Baltimore Maryland. And we often discuss Slate Star Codex and other related things at the meet up. We meet on Sunday evenings at 7pm at UMBC in the performing arts and humanities building on the 4th floor. Parking is free on the weekend.
For more information or to get added to the mailing list, you can email me at rivka@adrusi.com
Hi, thanks so much for organizing! Since you didn’t specify an exact date, would it work for you if I put the 9/22 meetup on the list as the schelling SSC meetup?
I will be out pf town on 9/22, so it may not be the best week to advertise. How about 9/29?
Sounds good, you’re all set to be listed for 9/29!
Salt Lake City Meetup
Address: 41 S 900 E #204, Salt Lake City, UT
Date: Saturday, October 5
Time: 3 PM
E-mail: wearenotsaved (at) gmail (dot) com
Group has been going strong for a couple of years, generally 6-8 people at the meetup, but there should be more this time.
I’ll organize a meetup for Urbana/Champaign, IL if anyone replies to this comment expressing interest. However, I’m not planning on revealing my address or sitting alone at a coffee shop if no one else is gonna show up.
If we can get three people total I’d meet somewhere around town. Otherwise, would you like to carpool to either the Indianapolis or the St Louis one, which are scheduled for the same day?
I’m in Champaign-Urbana and would love to join you!
Hi it’s me again Throwaway12973529. Both of our conditions have been met, so let’s do this! If you don’t reply in a few days I’ll pick a time and place (any weekend time would work for me).
The final list is actually going up on Thursday, so please pick a time and place as soon as you can!
I’ll show up too 🙂 The LW page says Saturday at 2:00. That work? The Schelling point is the Union basement, but if someone has another nice meetup spot in mind they could push for it here.
Stockholm, Sweden
Place: Grillska Huset, Stortorget 3, Stockholm
Time: 14th September 15:00-17:30.
Contact: https://www.meetup.com/Stockholm-Rationalists/members/133708922/
Cool, I was hoping I wouldn’t need to host it myself! 🙂 . Has there been a meet-up before?
I would like to host a meetup in Reno, Nevada.
Not sure how much of an SSC following we have here, so please be sure to indicate your interest by commenting here or emailing me (rotted 13 times) at fhcreirkv at tznvy.pbz
Tentative location: company office on the West end of town (open to downtown parks or other locations)
Tentative dates: 28/29 September
Quick update:
There is at least one other SSC reader in Reno, so I will pull this together! If there’s anyone else thinking about attending, please let me know.
As it doesn’t seem like we’ll have much of a turnout, I think that the new Reno Coffee Co location at 1300 S Wells will be ideal; cozy atmosphere, coffee, wine, and beer available on site.
I’m leaning towards early afternoon on Saturday, September 28, but am open to time/date/venue changes if that’ll enable more folk to attend. I’ll give it a few more days and then lock things in and announce it here.
Let’s get together in Vancouver, Canada.
Time: Sunday, Sept 29 at 1:00 PM
Place: Picnic area at Trout Lake Park, near the south beach
Contact: emily9595 [at] gmail [dotcom]
There is both a rationality group and an SSC group here but I am not affiliated with them. Either one is welcome to come in and overrule me here.
Restarting our Madison SSC fortnightly meetings after a sporadic summer. There will be a regular meetup on September 7
https://www.facebook.com/events/2396581020604611/
I’ve also scheduled one for September 21 to welcome people new to town, regroup as school gets started again.
Time: 5:00-8:00 (officially; usually goes until 10:00)
Location: 1022 High Street. This is a house (newly painted blue with a red door), very close to the #4 and #47 bus stop. Also the #13 and #5 stop close by. If you need a ride, leave a message on the FaceBook event and someone will get you.
Some basic vegan food will be served. Bring food for yourself or to share if so inclined.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2277768165678803/
We could consider scheduling it for Friday 9/20 if Scott felt like squeezing in a visit between Ann Arbor and Chicago. We are sorta on the way.
That should be Friday 9/27, if Scott wants to come.
Also, as pointed out in comments above, Epic employees often do their own EA/Rationality thing out in Verona. Our group is (so far) mostly university people with a sprinkling of former Epic employees. However, it would be great to get to know each other better, so if you are at Epic, do come.
There are a couple of rationality meetups here more “official” than mine, but I’d be happy to step up and toss in my hat to host a meetup for Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario if no one else does.
Time: September 29th at 2:00 PM
Place: Field of Waterloo CI. I’ll wear red converse and bring some frisbees for those that are athletically (or simply disc-) inclined. We’ll walk the half a block to my apartment at around 3:30ish and have the rest of the meetup there with tea and snacks, if space allows.
Contact: blxxia [at] gmail
I run a bi-weekly actually rationalist-adjacent salon every other sunday afternoon, by which I mean it’s comprised of 50% people who read rationalist blogs and 50% people who don’t. Generally we pick a topic and a reading to meander from, and then we meander for many hours. This meetup is between two salon weekends; email me for a link to its fb group if you wanna get into rat stuff a week early or to just check us out 😉
I will organize a meetup for Charlotte, NC.
Date/Time: September 16th, 2019 from 7pm to 10pm (Feel free to stop by anytime, but towards the start is of course ideal for easier introductions)
Address: The Mighty Meeple – 8440 Pit Stop Ct NW #180, Concord, NC 28027
Email nospam[at]catallaxymedia.com to introduce yourself ahead of time and/or let me know how many plan to attend. I’ll reply-all just before so everyone attending knows what to expect.
Mighty Meeple is a game store with a large backroom area of tables as well as a ton of free board games to play during this time frame for their Board Game Night. You can also bring your own food, although they have drinks and snacks available for purchase. My plan will be to sit at a long table with my young adult family and play games with a sign reading SSC so you can find us. There will be at least 4-6 people already. We can chat and/or play various games together.
This is two days before the planned Durham, NC meetup, but anyone who wants to travel two hours from there is welcome as well. This location is chosen for my convenience and ease of organizing, but if we get a group going and want to do something more central in Charlotte, that’s an option for the future.
Ooh, quite possibly! Mondays can be iffy, but I’ll give it my best shot!
Make sure you shoot me an email as above if you plan to attend. I’ll update everyone around the 12th with how many people have responded.
I will host a meetup for Berlin, Germany. There is an established LW meetup in Berlin, but I think they haven’t met since July and none of the organisers posted yet. I’ll happily defer to them, if they want to schedule something else.
Date/Time: September 22nd (Sunday), from 7pm to 10pm or longer.
Address: Turmstr. 10, 10559 Berlin.
Contact: ssc@alphabattle.xyz
The place is a club house for a club I’m in (JVB), so a store window, hard to miss. I’ll put up an SSC sign. Bus stops right in front, or subway to Turmstr or S-Bahn to Bellevue.
You can buy drinks at ~cost. There are various takeaway options around if you want to bring something or order in.
We’ll have the place to ourselves and can easily seat 30 people.
Cool, nice job👍, greetings from Hamburg, would have lived to be there, but alas exams. Hopefully next time 🙂
Hi Nudaa,
there will be a meetup in Hamburg (see below). Maybe that is more compatible with your exams 🙂
I organize a weekly SSC/LW/general rationality discussion group in Ottawa, Ontario called Rational Ottawa.
We hosted the 2018 meetup and will be happy to do so again this year.
When: Friday, September 20th, 2019 at 7pm
Where: The Fox & Feather, 283 Elgin St. We will book one of the private rooms.
Contact: walsh.the@gmail.com, also you can find/join the group Rational Ottawa on Facebook to see our weekly events.
We will plan for the meetup topic on the 20th to be a welcome to new members/getting to know interested parties, as well as a year-in-review of the 50+ meetups we’ve had since 2018’s “Meetups Everywhere” event, so that you interested parties can get to know the kind of things we get up to. Our average attendance at meetups is about 7, but last year this event drew about a dozen. Anyone who is interested is, of course, also welcome to join in on our “regular” meetups, no need to wait for the special welcome topic on the 20th.
Never organized or attended a meetup before, but will organize one for Denver, Colorado:
Time and Date: 6pm on October 5, 2019
Address: 1520 1/2 Lowell Blvd, Denver CO, 80204
Contact: fsjdnjdnsjkuuoqq@aol.com
There will be a meetup in Helsinki!
Date and time: Tuesday 24th of September, 18:00-22:00
Location: Restaurant Dubliner Kaivopiha, Mannerheimintie 5. We will be in the private room called Guinness Lounge.
Contact: joenash499@gmail.com
There has been a Helsinki Slate Star Codex Readers’ Meetup for about two years now, with monthly meetups. We advertise our meetups on meetup.com, the “upcoming meetups” section of the slatestarcodex.com sidebar, and recently on Facebook. Turnout has usually been between 5 to 20 people. For this meetup I anticipate a large turnout with lots of new people, because of Scott’s post.
You can expect something like a normal night at the pub, except with a group consisting of other SSC readers (and without the background noise, since we’ll be in a private room.) You don’t have to contact anyone in advance, you can just show up.
Hope to see you there 🙂
I will host the meetup for Kansas City
I already organize the Rationalist group here, and we have a weekly SSC-esque meetup.
Place: Panera Bread, 10606 Shawnee Mission Pkwy, Shawnee, KS 66203-3508, United States
Date: Sunday, September 22nd
Time: 12:30pm CST
Link to event: http://bit.ly/2LegDXJ
I will host a meeting in São José dos Campos, Brazil.
Parque Santos Dumont, next to the 14-Bis airplane replica, September 15, 2pm local time.
I will meet even one person in good faith, but will not go if no one contacts me.
My email prefix is my current username, and I use that very popular free email service from the company most famous for its search engine.
(last year I didn’t want split focus from nearby São Paulo but couldn’t go there, this year it’s been a couple days and they’re nowhere to be seen)
I am co-hosting a meetup for San Diego/La Jolla.
Place: La Jolla Colony Park
Time: Sunday, September 29 from 3-6 pm.
Contact: owenshen24(at)gmail
Note that re: the big list, it’s at least less useful in some places outside the US.
We had 50+ people show up in Tel Aviv last year, despite having only 27 people on that list.
Tel Aviv, Israel: I texted last year’s organizers, who did a great job. If they’re busy, I’ll work out the details for organizing a meetup.
I can offer a big living room and a back yard in a neighborhood that has parking but isn’t very accessible by bycicle or public transit. If you’d like to collaborate, my gmail is SonOfLilit.
Until I reply with the details, this is not an announcement and you should feel free to announce a Tel Aviv meetup anywhere at any time.
Tel Aviv meetup is now officially announced, see my top level comment.
I will be co-hosting the next meeting for the Columbus SSC Meetup Group.
Place: Private Residence: 397 Eldridge Ave, Columbus, OH, 43203
Time: Sunday, September 22 from 6-9 pm.
Contact: james.thomas.hays@gmail (RSVPs preferred to help with planning purposes, but not required)
At the annual meetup last year we had ~10 people, and since then a small group has continued to meet monthly, with usually around 4-5 attendees.
Food will be provided.
Highly doubtful that this will eilict many responses, buy I gotta try: Any chance there’s any readers interested in meeting up in the Sullivan/Ulster County area of the Catskills?
I don’t still live there, but I grew up in Sullivan County and I hope that you find some interest.
The meetup was a nice time last year in Paris, which induces a few more reunions during this last year. Let’s do a new one, so that we get to know a few more readers of SSC 🙂
Let’s meet on September 15th at 15:00, in the same location as last year:
48°51’37.9″N 2°17’11.8″E (https://goo.gl/maps/nBZzEk3uggA2)
I hope the weather is going to be nice. Last year it started to be a bit cold after some time, so take a sweatshirt just in case. If the prevision is bad, we’ll change the place to some coffee shop, maybe not in the same area, so check the page the day before.
Let’s reference my phone for now: +336.vingt-trois.dix-huit.82.99
But we also have this discord to organize: https://discord.gg/SDDETuZ
Hope to meet some more of you then!
PARIS
Sunday 15th of September, 15:00
48°51’37.9″N 2°17’11.8″E (https://goo.gl/maps/nBZzEk3uggA2)
We will be hosting another South Bay Meetup on Saturday, September 28th, starting at 2 P.M. in our house, 3806 Williams Rd., San Jose, CA 95117. For more details see …
Darn, I’ll be in the Bay Area the week before. Maybe next time!
Welcome SSC/LW/EA folks to our monthly social meetup in Houston, Texas, U.S.!
Place: Brasil (cafe, 2604 Dunlavy St, Houston, TX 77006
(Place text copied directly from their address on google maps. yes, I think they format their address a little strange, but if you copy and paste that address into google maps it works, so, /shrug)
Time: 15 September 2019, 2:00pm to 5:00pm local time (CDT iirc)
Contact our group: houston-rationalists (at) googlegroups (dot) com
Contact me directly: jnynzoreg.jbex@tznvy.pbz (rot13); you may also message me on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/willa
I organize the Houston Rationalists group and we have a social meetup for all types (SSC/LW/EA, etc.) once a month. Our September meetup is Sunday the 15th from 2:00pm to 5:00pm as described above. You can find extra event details and a description of the venue here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7LmParXjZHtL68QsM/houston-rationalists-september-meetup
We are also on
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1816070091838828/
Discord: https://discord.gg/JfczQdd (link expires after 5 uses, please contact me if you want to join our discord but the link has stopped working)
Thanks,
Willa
I will host a meetup for Cleveland, Ohio
place:Tabletop Cleveland
Time: 9/28 1300
Contact me at: FerbFreeman@gmail.com
I will host a meetup for Norman, Oklahoma
Place: University of Oklahoma, Bizzell Memorial Library, room 421
Time: September 22nd at 2 PM.
Much like Bean’s posting above, this is a successor to the Norman meetup for last year, which I had conflicting plans during. However, I can’t make it to OKC, so this one is actually in Norman. Hopefully the timing allows you to attend both if you want to.
I’m not posting any contact info here, so here are my detailed contingency plans: if nobody shows up to the meetup within one hour, I will leave. If room 421 is for some reason unavailable we will meet in the reading area inside the front (south) doors, north of the front desk. I will fashion a small SSC sign out of a piece of paper or something.
First, hi, fellow Oklahoman SSC reader! I keep being surprised by how many of us there are.
Second, does it make sense to schedule both on the same weekend? I’d be interested in coming to an OU meetup, but probably not that close to the OKC one.
I was torn about whether to it would be better to schedule them for the same weekend or different weekends, seeing a plausible case for both. I guess the big list of meetups isn’t up anywhere yet, so I will change the date to Saturday, September 28 at 2PM. Same place.
In case of some sort of terrible communications mix up, my contingency plan is to attend both dates I’ve listed here, but everyone else should just try to attend the 28th.
I’ll be hosting a meetup in Halifax, Nova Scotia on September 21
Time: 7pm
Location: Uncommon Grounds (1030 South Park Street)
There’s three of us here who already meet fairly regularly, and two others expressed interest on LessWrong recently. Don’t really expect to get many more than that, Halifax is a pretty small city. But if you’re in the area please join us!
I will be hosting a meetup for Montreal, Canada.
Where: 5455 rue d’Iberville, loft 111A. At the front door, dial 800.
When: Sunday, September 22nd 2019, from 2:00 PM to 9:00 PM.
Language: EN/FR with live translations as necessary.
Contact: Yohan 514-562-7682 or 1806992@gmail.com
Facebook Event: http://www.fb.com/events/364654251136478
The meeting place will be at the collective l’Infini, which recently started hosting LW meetups twice a month. Can comfortably host 30 people. Cozy and quiet. Note that the space welcoming the meetup is a sober space, so no drug/alcool consumption inside. All are welcome to bring/cook food.
I’ve hosted the past 2 SSC meetings in Montreal as well as past LW meetups, and I vouch for Yohan.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of expected attendees, we’ve canceled the Slate Star Codex event on Sunday.
We will be thus resuming our regular LessWrong meetups, the next one being on October 2nd, to which you are all invited: http://www.fb.com/events/800265133725597
LW/SSC – Cologne meetup group here.
We will have our next meetup on September the 21st at 5 pm.
I will host at Marienweg 43, 50858 Köln (private venue, everyone who wants to attend is welcome)
Contact: marcel(underscore)mueller(at)mail.de
If you are unable to find us call +491788862254.
I organize the SF LW/SSC meetups. Our topic for the 23rd is one of the more popular ones, and should be good for newcomers:
WHEN: 23 September 2019, 6:30 PM
WHERE: 170 Hawthorne St, San Francisco, CA 94107, United States
CONTACT: rocurley@gmail.com
We’ll be meeting to give and listen to very short talks!
We’ll do 7-minute lightning talks with 3 additional minutes allowed for questions. We’ll also limit the number of programming-related talks to no more than half of all talks, in order to promote variety.
A talk doesn’t have to be formal, planned, or even something that you’d expect someone to Give A Talk About; it can be as simple as telling the group about something you find interesting or cool. In the past, we’ve had people talk about topics like: how complicated the process of organizing fresh food for airplane flights is, their experience volunteering for a local political campaign, a video game they were designing and writing, and many others.
We don’t expect any sort of preparation or practice for these kinds of talks. They’re very casual and the expectations are low. If your talk isn’t great, it’s okay because we’ll just move on to another one in a few minutes. If it helps, think of it this way: you’re just being given the conversational floor for a few minutes, in a slightly more organized way than usual.
For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): 301-458-0764.
Format:
We meet and start hanging out at 6:30, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7:00 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.
I volunteer to host a meetup in Auckland, New Zealand, on Sunday 22 September.
Time: 4 PM Sunday September 22
Location:
Lim Chhour Food Court
184 Karangahape Rd, Auckland 1010
Parking is available at Wilson’s Car Park on Cross Street. You may also find free street parking. There are excellent public transport links from many parts of the city.
Please consider perusing the wonderful range of food options and purchasing a drink, snack, or meal to support our hosts. If you can’t fit it in the budget or just aren’t hungry, though, please come anyway as we’d love to have you!
For help, further details, or any other questions, contact Ben, +64 22 685-4105 benjsmith at gmail . You may also join the rationality-adjacent Life Beyond Lectures community and contact Hanna, @scarlettwidow#0526 on their discord https://discord.gg/WnKVcsP , or find Ben and Hanna and the Effective Altruism Auckland community on our Facebook Messenger https://m.me/join/Abaero_uwyCzE_9m or Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Effective-Altruism-Auckland/
Facebook event: https://m.facebook.com/events/719383851840858/
I will host a meetup for New York City
Place: Pumphouse Park, but if it’s raining or we’re otherwise not there go to the main atrium of Brookfield Place, which is adjacent to the park
Date and Time: Saturday 9/21 at 4pm
Contact info: tristan@thume.ca, (646) 480-0618
I’m the representative of the OBNYC mailing list, which is the main SSC/LW meetup group in NYC. This will be a special SSC meetup though rather than a normal OBNYC meetup.
Please add one person from Buffalo NY to your big list.
I will host a meetup in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Place: Cafe Literato,
1920 Northwestern Ave
West Lafayette, Indiana 47906
Time: September 7, 6:00 PM
Email: LanceSBush (at) gmail (dot) com
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/400532003915066
LessWrong link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/uApYiqpYMrJ4799Af
This group just started and has held one meeting so far. It is for both SSC-related topics and effective altruism.
We meet the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month at 6:00 PM at Cafe Literato. Feel free to get in touch with me by email or here: https://www.facebook.com/glacian
Hi Lance, thanks for posting! Just one thing – I notice your meetup is scheduled for before September 9th, which is when Scott said he’ll be posting the list. Since you said you meet the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month, how about we make your next meetup, on the 21st, the official SSC meetup?
Ahh, that’s unfortunate. Incidentally, I will not be in town on the 21st (one of the few times I don’t plan on being around on the third weekend!), so I could change the first one listed here to October 5th. Does that sound good?
Yup, that’ll work! Thanks!! 🙂
Prague
Time: Wed 25th of September at 18:30.
Place: Rationalist coworking space Epistea – Peckova 15, Karlínské náměstí (walk through tea room dharmasala to get there).
Contact: Jiri Nadvornik / nadvornik.jiri@gmail.com / +420 607 690 860
Food will be provided. English friendly.
FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1206188809583582/
If there is enough interest, I can host in Buffalo NY again. We got some interest last year and then – I am embarrassed to admit – I lost whatever contact information I gathered from our one meeting. So sorry folks!
So, partly by way of penance, I will try again, with renewed commitment to responsibility. It’s the triumph of optimism over experience!
I’ll host in Albany NY.
Let’s meet at Stacks Espresso (the 260 Lark St location) on 21 September, 10 am. Contact me at pellinorew at gmail. If you’re elsewhere in the Capital District and you think your area would be better, shoot me a note — Albany may not be the most central location and I’m willing to change to an area with better expected turnout.
I will host a meetup in Madrid, Spain
Place: Ferros Café (Calle del Maestro Ángel Llorca, 9, 28003 Madrid)
Time: September 21, 4pm
Email: pavill01 (at) ucm (dot) es
We speak both English and Spanish.
I expect few people (2-5) to show up, so if that time or place doesn’t work for you we can probably change it. About a week before I will post the event details in the local EA/LW Meetup group.
I will host a meetup for Cape Town, South Africa
Place: Haas Coffee, 19 Buitenkant St, Cape Town City Centre
Time: 28th September 11am.
Contact: rashtayob (you-know-what) gmail dot com
SEATTLE MEETUP!
I volunteer to coordinate the Seattle meetup and created a throwaway gmail account: seattlessc2019@gmail.com
I’m currently investigating venues and thinking of setting the event for 6:30 PM.
Here’s my short list:
The Northgate Mall Food Court
The Collective
https://www.collectiveseattle.com/
Arctic Club
https://thearcticclubseattle.com/
and Art Marble 21
https://www.artmarble21.com/
But if someone wants to suggest a different location or offer their home, I’m all ears.
Scott, I’d also be happy to drive you to/from the airport if I’m off work. Please let me know if you’re interested.
I’ll offer my home to host the meetup. I host local events at my house from time to time and my living area can accommodate 70-80 folks. I can be contacted at my navkaul@gmail.com or at my cell 512-658-7424 (text is best way to establish first contact as I avoid calls from unknown numbers).
My address:
1320 NE 68th St
Seattle 98115
Hi! I’ve organized a Seattle meetup. See this comment for details.
I will host a meet for Canberra, Australia
Place: the Snug Room at King O’Malley’s in Civic Centre
Time: 25th September, 6pm
Contact: Andy.Bachler [at] gmail [dot] com
I have booked the Snug Room at King O’Malley’s which is a quiet room behind the bar. Should be low key and quiet enough to allow easy conversation
Amsterdam
We organize LW Netherlands and also organized the SSC meetup last year. For this year we are still working out the location but we have several alternatives.
Date: Saturday September 28
Time: 15:00
Place: to be determined (check fb event or send me an email)
Email: mathijs[dot]henquet on gmail
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1413063898842151/
Toon mentioned having the meetup on the grass in front of Weesperzijde 100 again this year, is there something wrong with that location?
We’ll be meeting in a quieter bar in Brisbane everyone welcome, we have a good time.
Where: The Boiler Room, Fortitude Valley, the bar behind the mural of Bill Murrary at Tomcat. Head up the stairs then curve left, you’ll see it.
When: A month or so from now, 11th of October 2019, 7pm
Email: jarred.filmer@gmail.com
*finger guns*
The LessWrong Tel Aviv group is hosting an SSC meetup in Tel Aviv, Israel!
Date: September 24
Time: 19:00 Israel time
Location: Google Israel office, Electra Tower (Yigal Alon 98), 12th floor
Contact: highpriestessofelua (gmail)
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/522809181807892/
I will organize a meet-up for Chicago.
Date: Saturday, 9/28
Time: 6pm
Location: South Loop Strength & Conditioning – 645 S Clark, Chicago IL 60605
Contact Info: todd@southloopsc.com
The location is my gym, so we’ve got a large open space ripe for
exercisingsocializing.Many of the attendees of the monthly Chicago Rationality meet-ups at Harold Washington Library will also likely be in attendance.
Hi, I noticed you have Fairbanks on the tentative schedule of visits! I happen to be opening a small coworking space there and could accommodate a smaller meetup, depending on how many people want to come.
I will host a meetup in Seattle.
Location: The Territory, 5238 11th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105
Time/Date: 6:30PM October 2
Contact: orborde@gmail.com
Facebook event
This event is a great way to find the rationality/EA community in Seattle, if you haven’t met us already. It’s hosted at The Territory, a (the?) community-oriented Seattle rationalist group house.
London UK – the existing rationalish group is hosting on Sunday 15th September. We have a large room in a pub booked from 2pm. (As pubs go, it’s a pretty good venue. We had the HPMOR wrap party there too.)
Craft Beer Co. Islington
55 White Lion Street
N1 9PP
Contact: philip.hazelden@gmail.com, or the facebook group is https://www.facebook.com/groups/londonrationalish/
And the facebook event is https://www.facebook.com/events/513019092782854/
I will host for Calgary, Canada.
Time: Sunday September 22nd at 1:00 PM
Location: Weeds Cafe – 1903 20 Ave NW
Email: ssccalgary@yahoo.com
Please email me if you are going to attend. I live over an hour away, and would just like to make sure I don’t have to do the long drive if nobody will be attending, as the amount of interest in Calgary might be on the low side.
Similarly, I would like to encourage anybody who is on the shy side, or who might be anxious about a small turnout to attend as well. To this end, if it looks like we’re going to have a group of 3 or less people, I will let you know beforehand and you can reconsider attending if you like; this way, you won’t have to worry that you’re going to be the only one to show up.
My credentials: I was a member of the Ottawa meetup for a few months. It was a fantastic group.
Sorry for the late announcement. I hope it makes it for the list post!
There will be a SCC meetup in Hamburg!
Date and time: Saturday 21th of September, 17:00-22:00
Location: troy office, Maienweg 310, 22335 Hamburg, Germany.
Contact: gunnar.zarncke gmx.de
We are meeting in the small company office of the fintech startup troy in the 4th floor. Just ring at “troy”. Depending on the whether we can sit on our nice balcony. It would be nice if guests could bring blankets. This is not an official company event but privately organized. Some foods and drinks might be provided, but I’d appreciate if you contribute.
There will be some prepared ice breakers and discussion topics, but you are free to contribute or just meet and talk.
I have previously organized LessWrong meetups in Hamburg in 2014 and 2015, see e.g. here but stopped running them. I attended and liked the Berlin LessWrong/SCC meetups. This meetup might be a step to restart the community in Hamburg.
Very cool, I would like to come but am a bit too time-constrained – in particular, no time at the weekends. How much of a Hamburg community is left?
Hmm, good question. I exist. That makes three of us, I reckon? 😀
I volunteer to organise meetups for Cambridge (UK) and Munich.
Cambridge:
Time: Wednesday 16th October 7pm
Place: The Burleigh Arms
Munich:
Time: Thursday 19th September 7pm
Place: Augustiner-Keller
Contact detail: rlm72[at]cam.ac.uk
Details are flexible, comment or email me if something else would be more convenient. Recommendations for an alternative venue for Munich are welcome; I randomly picked one of the few places I know.
I have been organizing a small meetup group in Lexington, Kentucky since last year’s meetup blitz. We have 3 regulars with an occasional fourth. We will be doing a meetup for new people at West Sixth Brewery on the 22nd.
Lexington, Kentucky
West Sixth Brewery
501 West Sixth Street
Suite 100
Lexington, KY 40508
7:00 pm, Sunday 9/22/19
Contact me at hellernathanSSC at Gmail dot com if you’re interested.
Ctrl+F for nearby cities: Louisville, Cincinnati, Frankfort, Covington, Shelbyville
I will host a meetup in Toulouse, France.
Place: Eurêkafé, 24 Rue Léon Gambetta
Time: Monday, October 7th, 7pm
Contact: me -a-t- jrmyp -d-o-t- net
It’s the usual place of the local EA meetups, which I co-organize.
There will be a Slate Star Codex meetup in Northampton, MA
Date and time: 6:30PM, Saturday, September 21, 2019
Location: Packard’s Bar and Restaurant, 6:30PM, Saturday, September 21, 2019
Contact: Alex Liebowitz, alex[at]alexliebowitz.com
We are an existing meetup who started at the 2018 Meetups Everywhere and still meets regularly. The first meetup got 12 folks, most of whom still come at least occasionally, and we’ve picked up some more over time as people find us through the sidebar and open thread. Attendance is typically in the neighborhood of 4-7, but it’s safe to assume we’ll get significantly more this time around.
We are meeting in the Library Room at Packard’s Bar and Restaurant in Northampton. To find it, walk all the way to the back and take a right.
To learn more, visit the Less Wrong post for this meetup.
Update/correction to location!
This meetup was originally scheduled at the Library Room at Packard’s, which is our usual choice, but it turns out they double booked us and someone else had the room first. So we changed the reservation and the new plan is to meet in the main dining area of Packard’s. They’re going to put together two tables for us, so it’ll be a bit less quiet, but plenty of room. I’ve updated the Less Wrong listing as well.
Let’s meet up in Oxford:
The Gardener’s Arms
39 Plantation Road,
Oxford,
OX2 6JE
http://www.thegarden-oxford.co.uk
Thu 19th, from 6pm.
Apparently it’s “the only 100% vegetarian & vegan pub menu in Oxford”.
I’ve organised one of these meetups before, in Birmingham UK, but I’m new to Oxford so feel free to suggest a better location.
(I’ve posted on the new Open Thread too, but let’s keep replies to this thread)
I’ll be there! Gardner’s Arms is a great venue.
This was awesome! Btw @gww, do you have the list of emails that we made at the end of the meetup? i’d love to do another meetup eventually (or just to keep in touch with the people from this one!)
Yes, it was 😀 For people who didn’t make it, about a dozen fascinating people turn up with a broad range of interests, we ended up splitting into two groups to help conversation and the groups mixed throughout the evening. There’s plenty of interest in meeting up regularly.
I’ve sent out an email to everyone who left their address (check your spam?), we’ve now got a Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1221768638031684/ and I hope we’ll have our next meetup in a month or so. If you don’t want to use Facebook feel free to email ssc at sambrown dot eu and I’ll let you know the details.
I’ve also updated https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Less_Wrong_meetup_groups
I will host a meetup for Riga, Latvia.
Place: Caffeine, Audēju iela 15
Date: September 28th
Time: 1:00 PM
Contact: cerulean.lemniscate [you-know-what] protonmail dot com
I will host a meet up Aug 26 in San Diego, CA
Place: La Jolla Colony Park
Time: 3PM
I host regular meet ups in San Diego, the facebook group is https://www.facebook.com/groups/1944288489124568/
Hi! Owen already volunteered to host a San Diego meetup, at the same place but on September 29th, which has the double benefit of being on a weekend and also being in the future rather than in the past 😛 Would you be okay with co-hosting with him on that date instead?