Pick a date, time, and location that seems sensible. Post a meetup. Say “I’m flexible about details, if this point in spacetime doesn’t work for people”. At the specified time, show up with something identifiable, and a book or some work that you can do to keep you occupied for, say, two hours in case nobody shows up. Hope somebody shows up.
Or feel free to say “I will only be there if I get at least N replies”, where my own preferences would place N at one or two but YMMV. That reduces the probability of being bored and alone, but also reduces the probability of successfully meeting someone.
If you wanted low-level technical details, this is how I do it:
I have a phone number to a cafe, where I already did some meetups, so I call them to reserve a table for me on Monday from 18:00. They have no problem with it, even if I say “I am not sure how many people will come, at most 10 but maybe much less”, because on Mondays they are half-empty anyway.
When I did this the first time, I used google and recommendations from my friends about nice places in the city. Then I visited personally (to see the place, and to be able to negotiate in person) and asked whether it would be okay to have a table reserved there. -- I specifically emphasised that most participants will be students who don’t have much money and just want to talk, so they shouldn’t expect a big revenue from this; and I asked whether that would be acceptable. (It’s better to have a feedback in advance than a misunderstanding later.) -- Then I picked a Monday cca 2 weeks in future.
I post an announcement on LW, and also to the local LW mailing list. Sometimes I send personal e-mails to people I think could be interested. (Mostly they don’t come, but sending the e-mail is so cheap and sometimes they come, that it’s worth doing. Some people don’t come the first few times, and then when I already lost hope, they appear.) -- At the beginning I also used to post an invitation on my Facebook page.
A day or two before the meetup, I send e-mail reminders. The e-mails contain my phone number, in case someone would have last-minute problem finding us.
I go to the meetup. -- At the beginning, I was careful to be the first one there, and to somehow attract other people’s attention (e.g. have a paper saying “LessWrong” on the table). These days we already know each other, and we meet in a cafe that has only three tables, so this is not necessary.
There are two problems here: (1) Increasing the visibility of LW among minds which could be positively influenced by it. (2) Coordinating the already interested minds to meet at one point in the timespace.
You asked specifically about the latter, but I want to make it explicit that the former is a meta-strategy for the latter. The more people know about LW, the easier it is to get some of them to the meetup. (These is a chance—although I wouldn’t rely on it—that with popularity big enough, someone else would organize the meetup.)
As a data point, the first meetups in Slovakia had between 4 and 6 people. And even that was because there were already 2 organizers (me and my girlfriend, and she did it partially to make me happy), and at that time there were no regular meetups in neighbor countries, so we regularly had one or two visitors from other country. It took more than a year to create a relatively stable community of about 10 local people. And I had to make some trade-offs; for example a few of them are not fluent in English, so we speak in Slovak, which excludes the potential foreign visitors.
I am saying this to prepare you not to be disappointed by smaller participation. On the other hand, there are a few possible strategic moves I have ignored so far (such as doing a LW presentation at a local university), so a better strategy could possibly bring higher participation.
How do I organize a LW meeting in a city (and perhaps the entire country) where I strongly suspect nobody else visits LW.com?
Pick a date, time, and location that seems sensible. Post a meetup. Say “I’m flexible about details, if this point in spacetime doesn’t work for people”. At the specified time, show up with something identifiable, and a book or some work that you can do to keep you occupied for, say, two hours in case nobody shows up. Hope somebody shows up.
Or feel free to say “I will only be there if I get at least N replies”, where my own preferences would place N at one or two but YMMV. That reduces the probability of being bored and alone, but also reduces the probability of successfully meeting someone.
If you wanted low-level technical details, this is how I do it:
I have a phone number to a cafe, where I already did some meetups, so I call them to reserve a table for me on Monday from 18:00. They have no problem with it, even if I say “I am not sure how many people will come, at most 10 but maybe much less”, because on Mondays they are half-empty anyway.
When I did this the first time, I used google and recommendations from my friends about nice places in the city. Then I visited personally (to see the place, and to be able to negotiate in person) and asked whether it would be okay to have a table reserved there. -- I specifically emphasised that most participants will be students who don’t have much money and just want to talk, so they shouldn’t expect a big revenue from this; and I asked whether that would be acceptable. (It’s better to have a feedback in advance than a misunderstanding later.) -- Then I picked a Monday cca 2 weeks in future.
I post an announcement on LW, and also to the local LW mailing list. Sometimes I send personal e-mails to people I think could be interested. (Mostly they don’t come, but sending the e-mail is so cheap and sometimes they come, that it’s worth doing. Some people don’t come the first few times, and then when I already lost hope, they appear.) -- At the beginning I also used to post an invitation on my Facebook page.
A day or two before the meetup, I send e-mail reminders. The e-mails contain my phone number, in case someone would have last-minute problem finding us.
I go to the meetup. -- At the beginning, I was careful to be the first one there, and to somehow attract other people’s attention (e.g. have a paper saying “LessWrong” on the table). These days we already know each other, and we meet in a cafe that has only three tables, so this is not necessary.
There are two problems here: (1) Increasing the visibility of LW among minds which could be positively influenced by it. (2) Coordinating the already interested minds to meet at one point in the timespace.
You asked specifically about the latter, but I want to make it explicit that the former is a meta-strategy for the latter. The more people know about LW, the easier it is to get some of them to the meetup. (These is a chance—although I wouldn’t rely on it—that with popularity big enough, someone else would organize the meetup.)
As a data point, the first meetups in Slovakia had between 4 and 6 people. And even that was because there were already 2 organizers (me and my girlfriend, and she did it partially to make me happy), and at that time there were no regular meetups in neighbor countries, so we regularly had one or two visitors from other country. It took more than a year to create a relatively stable community of about 10 local people. And I had to make some trade-offs; for example a few of them are not fluent in English, so we speak in Slovak, which excludes the potential foreign visitors.
I am saying this to prepare you not to be disappointed by smaller participation. On the other hand, there are a few possible strategic moves I have ignored so far (such as doing a LW presentation at a local university), so a better strategy could possibly bring higher participation.