If we had schedules and a book full of activities and a large group on a mailing list, someone with all the proactiveness of a bag of rocks could make meetups happen. But we don’t have those things, so nothing happens unless someone is feeling “agent-ey.”
This suggests that the way to systematically make things happen is not to organize meetings, but to put in place such a system (schedules, book full of etc.) for organizing meetings. Otherwise you need someone to feel “agent-ey” every time; that doesn’t seem sustainable.
Edit: That is, if you’re a person in such a group and you’re feeling “agent-ey”, Manfred’s comment suggests that your efforts would be better spent putting a system in place that would allow things to happen without any agentness involved, as opposed to putting forth the effort to make a thing happen this one time. I’m not sure if my experience supports this; I’ll have to think about it.
This suggests that the way to systematically make things happen is not to organize meetings, but to put in place such a system (schedules, book full of etc.) for organizing meetings. Otherwise you need someone to feel “agent-ey” every time; that doesn’t seem sustainable.
Edit: That is, if you’re a person in such a group and you’re feeling “agent-ey”, Manfred’s comment suggests that your efforts would be better spent putting a system in place that would allow things to happen without any agentness involved, as opposed to putting forth the effort to make a thing happen this one time. I’m not sure if my experience supports this; I’ll have to think about it.
The big choke-point then being item #3 - getting a large group :P