The last SSC survey asked people if they wanted a meetup in their city. Seventy cities had 10+ people looking for a local SSC meetup.

Here’s the plan: I’m going to list cities. If you’re willing to organize a meetup for your city, then decide on a place, date, and time, and post them in the comments. You may also want to include an email people can reach you if if they have questions.

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 – and we’ll try it out.

Some suggestions for would-be organizers:

1. I might not post the thread with places/dates/times until April 3, so that weekend and the weekend after might be good choices.

2. I predict that only a quarter of people who expressed interest will 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.

3. 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. Restaurants are middling. Bars don’t seem to have worked very well at all.

4. On the survey, most people who wanted to go to SSC meetups were willing to settle for generic rationalist meetups, so if you already run one of those 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.

5. If you want to organize, but someone’s already put their name down for your city, just comment anyway. I’ll mostly go with first-come first-serve, but there might be exceptions if I know someone pretty well, if they have previous experience organizing meetups, or if they have access to a better venue.

Added: If you’re formally volunteering to organize a meetup, please respond with an unambiguous statement to this effect, the address, the time, and the date (+ contact details if you’re comfortable giving them). I’m not going to count someone as offering to organize a meetup unless they do this.

Added (2): I’m serious about this. I can’t just post “there’s a meeting in Chicago at Bob’s house” and expect people to show up. If you are willing to organize/lead, please give an exact address, date, and time (+ preferably contact). Don’t post something vague and then expect lots of other people from your city to show up and offer tips about what the best place and time will be. You don’t have to agonize about when it should be. Just choose something and stick to it.

Cities (and number of interested people) are:

Ann Arbor: 23

Atlanta: 29

Austin: 43

Baltimore: 23

Berkeley: 44

Berlin: 25

Birmingham (UK): 10

Boston: 144

Brisbane: 12

Calgary: 12

Cambridge (UK): 19

Canberra: 12

Charlotte: 10

Chicago: 100

Cincinnati: 13

Cleveland: 16

Cologne: 13

Columbus: 20

Copenhagen: 13

Dallas: 20

Denver: 34

Detroit: 23

Dublin: 19

Edinburgh: 10

Edmonton: 12

Helsinki: 33

Houston: 21

Kansas City: 14

London: 121

Los Angeles: 74

Madison: 25

Melbourne: 29

Milwaukee: 10

Minneapolis: 29

Montreal: 16

Mountain View: 11

Munich: 18

Nashville: 12

New Haven: 13

New York: 195

Oakland: 27

Oslo: 11

Ottawa: 16

Oxford: 18

Paris: 20

Philadelphia: 51

Phoenix: 17

Pittsburgh: 28

Portland (OR): 38

Raleigh: 17

Rochester: 12

Sacramento: 13

Salt Lake City: 23

San Diego: 27

San Francisco: 148

San Jose: 58

Sao Paulo: 11

Seattle: 111

St. Louis: 20

Stockholm: 14

Sydney: 37

Tel Aviv: 27

Toronto: 56

Vancouver: 23

Vienna: 15

Warsaw: 10

Washington DC: 110

Wellington: 11

Zurich: 16