Suggestion: Meetup content on forums

[Kevin Beal]

So I noticed that there are actually a surprising number of people using Meetup.com to meet other FDR-folk. Unfortunately not in my area, but it gave me an idea.

 

It would be cool to see more integration of Meetup and the forums since there is already a subforum devoted to meeting other people.

 

It would seem to me to promote more meeting of decent philosophy minded people to have something right in the forum template (like at the bottom in a separate box) that has (for example) the biggest 10 FDR meetup groups and also a list of upcoming meetups in these groups. And just generally remind people that they could have the opportunity to actually meet other like-minded people face to face.

 

Writing in a forum is kind of a weird thing. Not having the immediate feedback of body language or inflection can (at least for me) make me doubt myself. "Did I say that in a clear enough way?", "what if they thought I meant something else...?", "what if I come off like a weirdo" and so forth. In contrast, talking about philosophy with people IRL seems to be always more preferable (at least to me) even if they aren't particularly good at it.

 

Here's the link to the Meetup API

 

I don't know exactly what that would look like, just an idea.

[JamesP]

This is a really interesting idea... I can see something like, linking your Meetup sign-in to the boards, and possibly importing the Meetup Everywhere map on its own page or something... though I'm not really sure what else we'd do at the moment with that.

[Kevin Beal]

Well, I was thinking upcoming events might be super cool and get more people in those areas who may not know about the Meetups to go. And just generally try and connect people more locally. I like the map idea too