First off, thank you for this post. The Ohio meetup group is also new, and working on building our membership and activity level. I will probably make a number of posts on the various topics brought up here, instead of one big one. I’ll start with ideas for helping new people acclimate to the LW memeplex and culture.
We have talked individually with people we’ve brought to meetups in order to get their opinions and reactions from the experience. We have also made a thread in our google group for newcomer reactions. Using this information, we have come up with the following ideas:
First, new people are most likely to be confused, and least likely to feel comfortable interrupting in order to ask for clarification. For our next meetup I am bringing weighted handkerchiefs that could be thrown onto the center
of the table to signal “I’m lost! Please back up and explain!”. This is much easier to do than verbally interrupting, and wouldn’t carry the same negative stigma. Especially if we made a silly show of it to make it seem fun and amusing, and not rude and scary. Also, we would make sure to demonstrate this action-reaction at the beginning of the meetup (i.e “Look! We all think it’s great fun when the handkerchief(s) get thrown!”). The hope is that new people will be more likely to participate, and get clarification when needed.
Also, one of our members is working on a brochure to serve as a Less Wrong primer of sorts (it has many of the terms we use when having a discussion such as “taboo the word”). I won’t link to it here, because I don’t know if he considers it ready for general consumption yet, but next time I see him, I’ll mention this thread.
We have considered hosting a local website, as mentioned by nyan_sandwich below. I think this is a great idea, and fully support anyone who wants to work on the $location.lesswrong.com concept.
I like your handkerchief idea, I would probably feel more comfortable bringing some newer friends to talk if there was something like this in place. Thank you for sharing.
First off, thank you for this post. The Ohio meetup group is also new, and working on building our membership and activity level. I will probably make a number of posts on the various topics brought up here, instead of one big one. I’ll start with ideas for helping new people acclimate to the LW memeplex and culture.
We have talked individually with people we’ve brought to meetups in order to get their opinions and reactions from the experience. We have also made a thread in our google group for newcomer reactions. Using this information, we have come up with the following ideas:
First, new people are most likely to be confused, and least likely to feel comfortable interrupting in order to ask for clarification. For our next meetup I am bringing weighted handkerchiefs that could be thrown onto the center of the table to signal “I’m lost! Please back up and explain!”. This is much easier to do than verbally interrupting, and wouldn’t carry the same negative stigma. Especially if we made a silly show of it to make it seem fun and amusing, and not rude and scary. Also, we would make sure to demonstrate this action-reaction at the beginning of the meetup (i.e “Look! We all think it’s great fun when the handkerchief(s) get thrown!”). The hope is that new people will be more likely to participate, and get clarification when needed.
Also, one of our members is working on a brochure to serve as a Less Wrong primer of sorts (it has many of the terms we use when having a discussion such as “taboo the word”). I won’t link to it here, because I don’t know if he considers it ready for general consumption yet, but next time I see him, I’ll mention this thread.
We have considered hosting a local website, as mentioned by nyan_sandwich below. I think this is a great idea, and fully support anyone who wants to work on the $location.lesswrong.com concept.
Salt Lake City, UT group. Also new.
I like your handkerchief idea, I would probably feel more comfortable bringing some newer friends to talk if there was something like this in place. Thank you for sharing.