I probably should have hesitated before saying that for sure. There are some legitimate reasons to keep it private. For one thing, there’s a finite amount of seating available. We can handle a few extra people, but we would have difficulty handling another 20.
One of the factors that lead to the decision this year was, did we want a big, grand Rationalist Gathering, or did we want a cozy celebration among family and friends? Both could be awesome in their own way, and I’d like to try the former next year, but this year we decided to try the latter (in particular because a lot of this WAS experimental and we weren’t sure how it’d play out). There was also an afterparty at an apartment and if we hit a certain threshold of people, we wouldn’t be able to invite everyone back.
We did have one guest who have never seen Less Wrong content before, who DIDN’T seem to think we were a crazy cult… so that was good.
Well, that’s why I said potentially open-invite. Assumption being, that if it’s not, then said carpool would not happen. I am not at all interested in party-crashing!
How about this:
Should you decide to make this an open-invite, Grand Rationalist Gathering, then I will happily organize a carpool with other people.
Should you decide to make this a cozy celebration among friends, then of course I completely understand, and wish you best of luck!
Possibly out-of-date information: some 20 years ago, I went to at least one micro sf convention—held in a motel, so there’s one function room and the whole thing isn’t very expensive. Now that I think about it, there’s one such still going on.
This is just a thought thrown in if you want to expand the solstice celebration.
I probably should have hesitated before saying that for sure. There are some legitimate reasons to keep it private. For one thing, there’s a finite amount of seating available. We can handle a few extra people, but we would have difficulty handling another 20.
One of the factors that lead to the decision this year was, did we want a big, grand Rationalist Gathering, or did we want a cozy celebration among family and friends? Both could be awesome in their own way, and I’d like to try the former next year, but this year we decided to try the latter (in particular because a lot of this WAS experimental and we weren’t sure how it’d play out). There was also an afterparty at an apartment and if we hit a certain threshold of people, we wouldn’t be able to invite everyone back.
We did have one guest who have never seen Less Wrong content before, who DIDN’T seem to think we were a crazy cult… so that was good.
Well, that’s why I said potentially open-invite. Assumption being, that if it’s not, then said carpool would not happen. I am not at all interested in party-crashing!
How about this:
Should you decide to make this an open-invite, Grand Rationalist Gathering, then I will happily organize a carpool with other people.
Should you decide to make this a cozy celebration among friends, then of course I completely understand, and wish you best of luck!
That sounds completely reasonable.
Possibly out-of-date information: some 20 years ago, I went to at least one micro sf convention—held in a motel, so there’s one function room and the whole thing isn’t very expensive. Now that I think about it, there’s one such still going on.
This is just a thought thrown in if you want to expand the solstice celebration.