Czech’s first Meetup in Prague report
Hello,
I’m happy to inform Less Wrong community about new meet up in Czech Republic, Prague. Despite the fact that nobody came at meet up I’d organized 2 months ago (mainly because it was organized only two weeks ahead), yesterday we met in 5 people. Plus, some other people (about next 3) just couldn’t make it yesterday, but are interested in future meet ups.
All of us are young men in 21-25, studying or working in mathematics (mainly data science), informatics or AI and one of us is studying international affairs.
Just 2 of us have some stronger background with Less Wrong (we have read HPMOR and at least core sequences), the rest is interested in these and are willing to catch up (more or less) and came based on our recommendation or by getting at the LW by luck.
We agreed we’d like to meet regularly to share our opinions, lifehacking experiences, commenting our lives etc. and we are going to meet in next 14 days. In addition, we agreed to plan longer-term meet up for those who don’t visit LW too often and hence have a chance to notice it.
Currently, the most challenging task I see so far is to find an optimal shape, form, of the group and formulate it’s motives and goals. It ranges from just being friends and chat from time to time to highly organized group with fixed time schedule, active work and close relationships. Of course, I do realize how hard it is to hold the group together and how we should not rely only on initial enthusiasm.
Yesterday, we discussed for about 3 hours about various topics like lifehacking, our studies, tips, most-actual-questions, our lifes… The most surprising thing I’ve found was how diverse we are in different techniques which help to our productivity—one of us needs stress, I need exact time schedule, other one is more effective when taking things easy, one testing nootropics, other one meditation, I eat my frog at the morning, other one after some other pleasant things et etcetera. Another interesting thing was how our lives have been entangled together—we know same people or friends, we have visited same courses… Not so surprising when living in city just with million or so people, but still interesting.
Less Wrong website (community) was what brings as together and I feel obligated to inform the community about it’s impact and happiness it nourishes. Also, any recommendations and help is welcome (I try to use http://wiki.lesswrong.com/mediawiki/images/c/ca/How_to_Run_a_Successful_Less_Wrong_Meetup_Group.pdf as a reference guide).
Thank you for that and I’m happy to see you on our future meet-ups (which will be held, I hope).
Congratulations!