Interested in a European lesswrong meetup

I just noticed there are now advanced preferences including a 'Location' field. Could someone plot that data?

This thread has it's value for planning a meetup, which invloves a lot of time-dependent discussion (who's available when in the coming weeks?) that would be clutter in the "Where are we?" thread.

I do agree that a link to "Where are we?" would have been useful in the top-level post, over there, people say where they are, and here they discuss planning.

Yup, such as me.

There's already a post for that!

I might be. I'm in Heidelberg, Germany. Calling all in S(W) Germany!

Helsinki here as well.

Putting together a small meeting of like-minded smart people in the EU is quite a different proposition compared to the US, speaking from personal experience (and in fact with fresh memories of just such a meeting near Strasbourg this past week, with 11 people from Sweden, Denmark, the UK, France, Italy, Germany and one from the US).

In the US you fly or drive everywhere, and people tend to all have the same options, it's a relatively egalitarian geography.

In Europe people have different preferences re flying, driving or taking a train, depending on where they live (mainland or island countries for instance), what the local infrastructures are like, and so on.

For a "meetup" defined as less than a half-day, I have a hard time seeing it happen other than locally, e.g. I'd be up for having one in Paris. (I've gone to a London meetup; that was expensive relative to the duration, though I consider it money well spent for having met a few LWers and transhumanists in person for the first time ever.)

For a one- or two-day seminar you can usually find a place where people from various parts of Europe are willing to come in, stay the night, and ship out the next day, where the cost of the stay remains reasonable compared to the cost of travel.

That's a little different from a more informal meetup though; may need slightly more structure. The "unconference" formats could be suitable, such as Open Space or BarCamp.

My sense of things is that it would be a judicious plan to first grow local communities with something like a "Rationality BarCamp" series, recruiting well outside the core LW readership - which would probably require making the topic a little more catchy than just "rationality". Then after a few of those, aggregate the more enthusiastic members of each of those communities into a larger regional unconference.

I've participated in and helped organize what is in retrospect a significant number of such campaigns. I'm willing to contribute that expertise and a fair chunk of my time, given enough interest.

Dublin wasn't much cheaper than London when I left it, and that was less than six months ago. I know the economy's cratering but I don't think the economy's adjusting that fast.

Also Edinburgh.

I'm normally in Norwich, but I'll be in Edinburgh next week (arrive Monday 16th late evening, departing morning of Sat 21) for the Festival and visiting my mother. I believe there are a couple of others in Edinburgh as well, so I'd be willing to meet up with whoever's around then.