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Last year we had organized meetups in sixty different cities around the world. A couple of the meetup groups stuck around or reported permanent spikes in membership, which sounds like a success, so let’s do it again. I’ll repeat the city list from last year, which has every city where at least ten people expressed interest in a meetup. A few nearby cities are merged to make sure they have enough people.

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. I would also prefer you include an email where people can reach you.

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.

In a week or so, I’ll make another post listing the details for each city so people know where to go.

Some details and suggestions for would-be organizers:

1. I don’t guarantee I’ll have the post with times and addresses up until August 8, so please choose a day after that. The weekend of the 11th -12th 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, 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 will pick among 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). 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!

EDIT: 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.