[Meta] Post-meetup reports and discussion

Suggestion: Like the other regular threads we have, I propose a new monthly Meetup Report Thread, where people will describe what happened during their meetups. There are a few meetups every month, so there will always be something to write about. Top-level comments could be the names of the meetups, and below them would be comments related to the specific meetup.

This would overcome some trivial inconvenience. First, writing a comment is easier than writing an article, at least psychologically. Second, comments are allowed to be short. If you only want to describe the meetup in one paragraph, posting an article feels like too much (and we have Discussion cluttered by meetups already), but writing a comment of that length is okay. So you don't have to decide to write a long text to report about the meetup. But if one person writes one paragraph, and another person writes another paragraph or two, then we gradually get some kind of report. People who keep meetup notes publicly outside of LW could use this to post a hyperlink or maybe a short summary.

Not sure how other people feel about it, but I would be more likely to write a comment about a meetup I participated in or organized, than a whole article.

It's extra work

This is why DC doesn't do detailed meetup reports.

We do keep brief logs after every meetup, though. We agreed not to mention who attended a meetup (the person posting the log has to bite the bullet, but only them) for privacy reasons, and just post one or two sentences about what happened.

At least for me, the problem seems to be that the more post-worthy something is, the more work it would be to post. The COZE report took me about a month to write, plus about a month of ignoring the almost-finished version. (I think I'd be faster at it now, though.) On the other end of the scale, keeping a list of topics discussed at pure-chat meetups wouldn't be much work, but would anyone bother to read them? I think almost all of their value could be given just by a list of "here are the sort of topics we like to discuss" for people who are on the fence about coming.

Meetups appear sort of cryptic to me, especially with the lack of replies and followup in most of the threads. As I'm interpreting TylerJay, the process could be demystified with a little summary of what transpired. I'm actually curious as to why this isn't already done normally.

It's extra work

I feel that if I were the host of a meetup, writing a short summary would be the most rewarding part.

Negative: it gives people who are on edge about attending a meetup an excuse not to.

I like the general idea of post-meetup reports, although not every group might be willing to. Or the smaller groups (such as my local one) might not have that much to share.

Maybe a couple of groups should just give it a try, by way of experiment? Just write up a report after the meetup and share it here. And to set an example, I'll be suggesting this to my own group and volunteer to do it. (Although, as said, my local group might not provide good material. Or we might. We'll find out.)