A lot of this is in the pre-prep; for example your events page can more strongly set an expectation that you must do the readings if you want to attend the meetup, by providing discussion questions that are very clearly based on the specific arguments that the writers of various pieces make.
If someone shows up who has not done the readings, you can do a few things:
ask them to chill somewhere quiet and do the readings before joining the group discussion
give them a shallow summary of the readings and let them participate but also like, don’t throw them excessive bones or overly accommodate them
if someone references something in one of the texts, you can give a quick summary of which reading it came from
whenever they raise a point that’s in the readings, explain (in a polite, non-snide way) that the readings address this point by saying xyz
Basically, you shouldn’t actively punish people who don’t do the readings, but your programming design should not accommodate them. When they come to readings discussion based events, they should end up feeling something like “oh crap, I could get a lot more out of this if I came prepared by doing the readings, everyone else is engaging in a much deeper level than I can manage to.”
And then they’ll know to do the readings going forward.
A lot of this is in the pre-prep; for example your events page can more strongly set an expectation that you must do the readings if you want to attend the meetup, by providing discussion questions that are very clearly based on the specific arguments that the writers of various pieces make.
If someone shows up who has not done the readings, you can do a few things:
ask them to chill somewhere quiet and do the readings before joining the group discussion
give them a shallow summary of the readings and let them participate but also like, don’t throw them excessive bones or overly accommodate them
if someone references something in one of the texts, you can give a quick summary of which reading it came from
whenever they raise a point that’s in the readings, explain (in a polite, non-snide way) that the readings address this point by saying xyz
Basically, you shouldn’t actively punish people who don’t do the readings, but your programming design should not accommodate them. When they come to readings discussion based events, they should end up feeling something like “oh crap, I could get a lot more out of this if I came prepared by doing the readings, everyone else is engaging in a much deeper level than I can manage to.”
And then they’ll know to do the readings going forward.