Having organized several of them for Southern California, my impression is that people willing to come to LW meetups occur within the population at rates between 1-in-200k to 1-in-5M people, depending on cultural factors and travel costs.
Looking at wikipedia and a map, the Raleigh-Durham-Cary “census statistical area” is a research hub and contains ~1.7M people with Nelson as a plausible center and a radius of ~25 miles. If you were willing to drive to Greensboro you’d have another 1.5M people to sift for interesting ones. Between the two locations you’ve got >3M which (if you’re lucky) might contain three people in each willing to drive 15 miles and maybe two willing to travel to “the other city” every other month.
If you want to take a crack at being the “social nucleation site” of a LW meetup group I would suggest finding pre-existing groups around atheist, skeptic, biohacker, lisp/ML/python/AI interests. This would take some googling and then a call or three to group organizers to ask of you can try inviting some friends to their group. Then simply announce on the front page that there will be a North Carolina meetup at the location the pre-existing group will use, starting about 60 minutes before and extending through and participating with their meeting. Use other meetup posts on LW as templates. It will probably be promoted when a mod noticed :-)
It might help to shake a few trees. Google this site for “NC” (I just did and found two people here) and send PMs. Friend them on FB and/or linkedin and see if anyone local turns up who you could invite. Get creative! Maybe get an account on meetup.com?
I can imagine you pulling between 1 and 5 interesting people the first time. And whether or not you pull anyone, you might find a neat crowd at one of the places you piggyback with! If you’re interested in the idea and have any specific questions about reward/work ratios or whatever send a PM and I’d be happy to share the tips and work/reward expectations I’ve worked out trying to set up meetups every so often :-)
You might try organizing a LW meetup?
Having organized several of them for Southern California, my impression is that people willing to come to LW meetups occur within the population at rates between 1-in-200k to 1-in-5M people, depending on cultural factors and travel costs.
Looking at wikipedia and a map, the Raleigh-Durham-Cary “census statistical area” is a research hub and contains ~1.7M people with Nelson as a plausible center and a radius of ~25 miles. If you were willing to drive to Greensboro you’d have another 1.5M people to sift for interesting ones. Between the two locations you’ve got >3M which (if you’re lucky) might contain three people in each willing to drive 15 miles and maybe two willing to travel to “the other city” every other month.
If you want to take a crack at being the “social nucleation site” of a LW meetup group I would suggest finding pre-existing groups around atheist, skeptic, biohacker, lisp/ML/python/AI interests. This would take some googling and then a call or three to group organizers to ask of you can try inviting some friends to their group. Then simply announce on the front page that there will be a North Carolina meetup at the location the pre-existing group will use, starting about 60 minutes before and extending through and participating with their meeting. Use other meetup posts on LW as templates. It will probably be promoted when a mod noticed :-)
It might help to shake a few trees. Google this site for “NC” (I just did and found two people here) and send PMs. Friend them on FB and/or linkedin and see if anyone local turns up who you could invite. Get creative! Maybe get an account on meetup.com?
I can imagine you pulling between 1 and 5 interesting people the first time. And whether or not you pull anyone, you might find a neat crowd at one of the places you piggyback with! If you’re interested in the idea and have any specific questions about reward/work ratios or whatever send a PM and I’d be happy to share the tips and work/reward expectations I’ve worked out trying to set up meetups every so often :-)
Thanks!