| Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 17/12/12 16:35 | I had an idea to keep a record of who attends meetups and what we do at each one, essentially an informal log of minutes, over some period of time. In order to ensure people's right to privacy, anyone can let me know at any time if you do not want your name on the log, in which case I will redact all names and only log the number of attendees. (You can email me at philip.lin1-at-yahoo with a throwaway email account if this is the case.) If this works out, I'll write up a topic to be stickied on Google Groups. Data may eventually be made public on LW. Potential issues: 1) Is there general opposition to the idea? How feasible is it? Is there a good place to coordinate this, Google Docs maybe? Other potential, non-personal privacy issues? 2) Is there a good way to get this message out to people on the main site and not (yet) on the mailing list? |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Ted Smith | 17/12/12 17:23 | On Mon, 2012-12-17 at 16:35 -0800, Philip Lin wrote:
<snip> > 1) Is there general opposition to the idea? How feasible is it? IsI think it's a good idea to keep track of demographic information of the DC meetup group, and of what goes on at the meetings. I don't think it's necessary to store names in that dataset. Names and other obviously identifying information doesn't seem to add anything to the data, and it makes storing it more problematic. Rather than have a default "opt-out" policy, I'd suggest that you track demographics and optionally allow people to identify themselves by name in the logs (for historical purposes, I suppose -- in case we want to know who was where after the Singularity happens ;-). This "opt-in" is more obviously okay. -- Sent from Ubuntu |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Maia | 17/12/12 19:21 | I'm also going to put forward that, in particular, I'd rather names/dates not be listed on the Google group- that's visible to literally anyone with Internet access, and it seems unkind to list people's movements on the Web, particularly with an opt-out system. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | David Simon | 17/12/12 19:22 | I'll third this; an attendance count would be cool, specific names not so much. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 18/12/12 06:46 | Is there a good way to track retention rates without using names? Also it doesn't have to be public, I'm fairly certain there's websites out there that can do invitation-only shared editing, although I don't know of any off the top of my head. The other option is we nominate someone (I'm willing) to do it on their local computer, and redact names if/when it's made public. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Ken | 18/12/12 06:53 | You should definitely take minutes with the content of the meetup though, as there are people who can't make it to each one, and there are others like myself in other cities that would appreciate it very much. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Michael | 18/12/12 08:58 | You could assign people numbers randomly or allow them to choose themselves. I'm against that, though, as one's still being tracked. Perhaps if you were to have a line of colored squares (which I'll call blocks), with an equal number of blocks per meetup attendees. Each person does not have a colored block of their own, but when you notice one person has not come back, you pick a block at random (or a program automates) to represent that. All the blocks are initially adjacent in a line on a y axis, but as some do not attend, their blocks move proportionately away from the line. A problem is if someone returns you may not remember which block represents their time absent. Another idea: bring a bag and tiny bits of paper to meetups, and kindly ask attendees to make some signature mark on the paper which they will thereon continue to use. The papers go into the bag, and no one knows who is whom. If some still wish to opt-out they can just use the reserved mark for opting out: a simple hyphen, for instance. Mark each bag with a date, a cue word for the topic, and you can track which marks stop appearing in bags. It might be difficult to digitize, though. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | David Simon | 18/12/12 09:25 | I would personally be okay with the number thing.
David Simon |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Ted Smith | 18/12/12 09:59 | You track the average meetups attended per person, and the number of
people at each meetup. If the number of average meetups goes down without the number of people increasing, retention is down. You obviously lose some granularity, but that's the cost of privacy. (If people opt-in to be publicly recognized at meetings either with their real name, LW username, or some other unique identifier, you gain some of the information back.) The standard way to do this is probably with a Google spreadsheet, but if we want something a little more heavy, I'll have a Qualtrics login while I have a valid UMD login (I think other UMD students will as well: check http://umd.qualtrics.com). -- Sent from Ubuntu Sent from Ubuntu |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | atucker | 18/12/12 20:08 | Does the thing you want me to sticky already exist? I couldn't find it. Cheers, Aaron
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 21/12/12 16:23 | I guess we'll just go with number of attendees, and no names. I think that the plans involving numbers/colors are too complex to implement easily, for a variety of reasons. Thanks to everyone for the feedback! |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | David Simon | 23/12/12 12:07 | Anybody else at the gallery now? |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 13/01/13 19:13 | Jan 13 meetup: Calibration exercises I want to say 7 people showed up (not counting David's SO), is that correct? Among other things, we estimated the physical dimensions and masses of several objects, the volume of a few container-type objects, and the nutrition facts of at least two food products. We got the sense that people's calibration of dimension was much better than that of mass; the relative densities between objects may have thrown off mass estimations more than any other factor. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 20/01/13 19:10 | Jan 20 meetup - We played games, as advertised! (Girl Genius card game, Blokus, Zendo) 5 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 27/01/13 18:59 | Jan 27 - The original intent of trying to derive people's true/hidden goals ('New Year's resolutions') from their 2012 achievements, devolved into general conversation on topics including minicamp, career goals, sciencey things, and a certain piece of glass. 4 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 03/02/13 17:20 | Feb 3 - We played a few rounds of Tsuro before transitioning into general conversation. We did not play any Zendo, which is unusual for games meetups. 6 people showed up today. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Roger C. | 10/02/13 18:32 | Feb 10 - We talked about methods until about 6, then moved to a restaurant and general conversation. 7 People attended.On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 8:20 PM, Philip Lin <clou...@gmail.com> wrote:
-- ~Roger Curley |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 17/02/13 15:25 | Feb 17 - We talked of various things including Space Chem the game, the up and coming RP group (currently looking like Eileen's zombie setting on Sunday mornings, if nothing else), and briefly on upcoming meetups in the near future (more 'Ask an Expert' topical discussions, follow up on Phil Goetz's offer to host TED talks.) We also explored the idea-space of what could be done with a Blokus set, and made a color-symmetric, highly-space-efficient tiling. 3 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 17/02/13 15:27 | My mistake - the photo of the Blokus board seems to have ended up in the "Quoted text" section. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Phil Goetz | 19/02/13 09:17 | On Sunday, 17 February 2013 18:25:05 UTC-5, Philip Lin wrote: What did people say about my offer to host TED videos? |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Maia | 19/02/13 09:25 | I wasn't there, but my two cents is: We have proved that we can get a bunch of people to a non-Metroable place for a meetup at least once (Billy Goat Trail), so I'd be in favor of trying it out. --You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "LessWrong DC" group. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 24/02/13 17:58 | The RP group character creation went without incident. "A nature hippie, a student, a soldier, and a federal agent all walk into a convenience store in small-town Colorado..." (I think it's neat how all of us chose different character archetypes despite not having collaborated before the session.) Following that, we had the meetup proper, where Richard led a discussion on economics. Topics that came up included the interaction and differences between economics and sociology, etc., insights from Sweden, and ideas to theoretically optimize various social institutions. Also, games were played (Tsuro, partial game of Bang!) 8 people showed up in total. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 03/03/13 18:25 | March 3 - We discussed ethics systems and viewpoints (different schools of thought, animal rights, quality of life and what constitutes "a life worth living"), and touched briefly on the effective altruism movement. Afterwards we went to dinner and played the "observation game" - take turns naming as many properties of an object as we can; in this case, a pepper shaker. 8 people showed up. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 10/03/13 17:55 | March 10 - The RP group is going well, we even picked up one more player. Various games (mainly Abalone and Race for the Galaxy; we tried the observation game again but I personally feel like it's better off as a non-full-attention activity) and socializing/planning happened. 9 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 17/03/13 18:02 | March 17 - The scheduled talk on stress-strain was tabled on account of lack of people. Instead we played Pandemic and Zendo for a bit, and discussed fictional works and science fiction. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Eileen Martz | 18/03/13 08:09 | 4 people attended. On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 9:02 PM, Philip Lin <clou...@gmail.com> wrote: March 17 - The scheduled talk on stress-strain was tabled on account of lack of people. Instead we played Pandemic and Zendo for a bit, and discussed fictional works and science fiction. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 24/03/13 18:12 | March 24 - the RP session was cancelled due to scheduling issues and people not being here; we played various games and had general conversation. 5 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 31/03/13 18:28 | March 31 - The RP group is further delayed, this time due to misplaced character sheets and general birthday-ness. General festivities, party games and conversation ensued, followed by dinner and more hanging out. 8 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 08/04/13 06:07 | Apr 7 - We had a house party and informal potluck, watched selected TED talks for a few hours, and played or spectated on a surprisingly entertaining game of four-player chess. I'm going to guess 10 +/- 2 people were there since I didn't get a chance to count. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 14/04/13 18:06 | Apr 14: General social and games meetup, including ideas for future meetups/other activities (*hand-wavy social pressure!*) : Columbus, OH megameetup attendance incl. road trip, Schelling-Day themed meetup, some sort of music/singing activity, and a book club and/or book exchange. 8 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | David Simon | 14/04/13 18:07 | Philip, thanks for taking all this stuff down every week, it's cool data. :-) --You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "LessWrong DC" group. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 28/04/13 21:04 | Apr 21 - meetup cancelled Apr 28 - Book exchange went well, 7 people came (and everyone both gave and received at least one book, hooray!) Afterwards we moved to Richard's house for RP and tasty snacks. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 29/04/13 06:08 | Also I forgot to mention in the pre-meetup time, we started a game of Nomic. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 05/05/13 18:42 | May 5: Social meetup, including preliminary character creation/planning for a possible superhero RP game (Truth & Justice system) when the current one finishes, and dinner at Joy Luck House which I was explicitly requested to mention here. 6 people came, 5 stayed for dinner. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 19/05/13 18:21 | May 19: Maia's Electronic Thing to measure stress levels didn't quite work, and we couldn't figure it out. There was discussion of life hacks - mostly diet/food/cooking - interspersed with the earlier game of Nomic, and also dinner at Joy Luck House again. 9 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Michael | 20/05/13 12:29 | Interesting. I can't really think of anything particularly life-hacky regarding cooking etc. aside from buying and cooking in bulk and large batches. Were there any profound hacks shared? (I realize this is a somewhat rude question and duly apologize in advance - feel free to ignore the question.) |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Roger C. | 20/05/13 12:31 | Mostly we got off topic, I think, although cooking advice is useful.
-- ~Roger Curley |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Eileen Martz | 20/05/13 14:55 | I would say life help, yes, but hacks, not so much. I'm just thinking what my grandmother would say if I told her I found
this cool, new way of eating that involves "cooking" the food in a
way that's probably well below her level. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 02/06/13 16:58 | June 2 - Introduction to Lojban, by David, followed by dinner. 7 people showed up. There was some talk of starting a Lojban learning group, if people were interested. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 23/06/13 17:46 | Last week (6/16): See relevant thread here. This week (6/23): Our first RP gameplay session, followed by conversation and Zendo (formal rules version). 6 people showed up. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 30/06/13 17:36 | 6/30: Return of Richard's economics talks/Q&A - mainly a brief intro to supply and demand graphs and their numerous applications. 8 people showed up. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 07/07/13 18:51 | 7/07 - We had a record-breaking 12 people today! As such, Zendo, Dominion, and Homeworlds were played by various groups of people at different points. Also there was a bit of planning for who wanted to go to the Boston megameetup next weekend. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 14/07/13 17:21 | 7/14 - Pretty uneventful meetup due to Boston mega-meetup happening this weekend. Besides the typical activities (RP, Zendo, and fun with Blokus pieces) we wandered the halls of the Portrait Gallery for maybe 30-45 minutes. 4 people showed up. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 21/07/13 19:36 | 7/21 - Discussion about what went happened at the Boston megameetup last week, and solicitation of thoughts moving forward for this meetup group, such as rituals like the NYC Winter solstice rituals run by Raemon (2011 summary, 2012), and/or various self- or social improvement activities. 10 people attended. Afterwards, about 5 people stuck around for dinner and a few games of No Thanks and Liar's Dice. Also, I'm committing to taking photos and uploading the results of the sentence-and-drawing Telephone game (or whatever it's called) when I get around to it, because I found them more than sufficiently funny to be worth sharing. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 28/07/13 21:40 | 7/28 - We ended up socializing for some time before we got around to the scheduled improv games, due to Michael's invited friends (four new people!) showing up. They were welcomed into, and fit into the group surprisingly well. As for actual improv games, we played or watched "Standing, Sitting, Lying" and "Dialogue for Three Emotion-states" and possibly others. There was dinner and further conversation at Merzi (like Chipotle, but Indian food), and still further conversation outside Archives metro station. A total of 11 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 04/08/13 19:23 | 8/04 - Games were advertised but not played; the D&D session ran overtime until other people started showing up, and we talked about cognitive biases, planned a biased RP one-shot (an offshoot of 'biased boardgaming') which flopped for various reasons, had dinner, and talked about various things related to morality and decision theory. 10 people showed. Next week, we decided to do another book sharing/swap meetup. Two weeks from now, the D&D group will be transitioning to the latest revision of the playtest rules (available for free with signup), and likely welcoming a few new players. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 11/08/13 19:00 | 8/11: People brought lots of books, a good number of which were loaned out! (Full list pending) Also, dinner and further hanging-out at the Navy Memorial. 11 people came. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 18/08/13 19:41 | 8/18 - Roger and Maia made up characters for the RP group; we (well, most of us) learned Lojban for about half of the official meetup, and moved on to conversation or doodling all over the poster boards. Also, the usual post-meetup dinner and hanging-out at Archives. 13 people showed up. Special thanks to whoever posted the meetup to /r/Lojban, which drew one other person who knew Lojban, in addition to David. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | David Simon | 24/08/13 12:25 | Pictures of the posters we made this meetup attached. David Simon
On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Philip Lin <clou...@gmail.com> wrote:
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 25/08/13 20:35 | 8/25 - VA meetup at Ballston Mall. Biased Pandemic happened! (Biased Zendo did not work so well.) People did various other stuff including a few Arimaa games, Lojban learning made official, and martial arts/parkour concepts. And, we (Roger/Maia and I) weren't sure whether there were 11 or 12 people. |
| unk...@googlegroups.com | 26/08/13 05:23 | <Ce message a été supprimé.> | |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Michael | 26/08/13 08:13 | Andrew, please don't list names. Thank you. (Can a post be deleted? I have a fairly strong preference for names not being listed in attendance logs.) |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Maia | 26/08/13 08:20 | I deleted the post. Andrew, thanks for providing an accurate headcount of 12 people. We have a policy against listing people's names in attendance logs, though. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Andrew | 26/08/13 13:47 | Is there a centralized place where all of the Less Wrong policies are provided (including this attendance name policy), so I can learn what to avoid doing before doing it? |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Maia | 26/08/13 13:55 | This isn't a LessWrong policy so much as a LessWrong DC policy... and no, we don't have any central place for that sort of thing. This particular policy was decided on near the start of this thread. I can't think of any other policies that we have off the top of my head; "don't post information about other people without their explicit permission" is probably a good rule of thumb, though... and just remembering that the mailing list is open to the entire Internet, no permissions required, and acting accordingly. I don't blame you for not knowing or anything, though, just to be explicit about that. Honest mistake, was corrected, almost certainly no harm was done. On Aug 26, 2013 4:48 PM, "Andrew" <andrew.le...@gmail.com> wrote:
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Robin Z | 01/09/13 15:07 | 8/31 - Goal-setting meetup. 12 people attended. - RZ Sent from my iPhone
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Maia | 01/09/13 16:31 | Other topics were also discussed. Not everyone was interested in putting short-term goals on the spreadsheet, so the group split for a while to do that. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 08/09/13 20:43 | 9/08 - Featuring special guest Robin Hanson. He spent about half the time talking about prediction markets, and the other half on brain emulations and open discussion. 14 people were here (not including Hanson, and notably a lot of "new" people who I haven't seen before.) |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 08/09/13 20:43 | 9/08 - Featuring special guest Robin Hanson. He spent about half the time talking about prediction markets, and the other half on brain emulations and open discussion. 14 people were here (not including Hanson, and notably a lot of "new" people who I haven't seen before.) |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 15/09/13 19:23 | 9/15 - The game of the day was Ergo, a card game based around creating formal logic statements. 6 people came. (A bunch of people were out sick this week.) |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Andrew | 17/09/13 00:50 | Philip, how could you not say anything about the most exciting part of the meeting -- seeing the cops chase down a guy right in front of us and bust him! |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 22/09/13 18:52 | 9/22 - Book swap was a bit low-key since not many people brought books compared to last time; a lot of discussion centered around various works of media and genres, tropes and stuff. 9 people came. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 29/09/13 20:19 | Sept 29 - We did "epistemic spring cleaning" - trying to come up with personal beliefs of uncertain or dubious origins, with the goal of making one's beliefs more accurate or well-thought-out - which was moderately successful, and also led to a lot of (IMHO) pretty interesting discussion. 12 people came this week.
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Eileen Martz | 08/10/13 12:17 | Oct. 6 - Games meetup - Much of the group didn't show up presumably because they were too tired from the camping/stargazing trip. We had light conversation and played Go, Equations, Bang!, and added "That's what she said." to the end of Once Upon a Time cards. 6 People attended.
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Robin Z | 13/10/13 18:29 | Oct. 13 - Jobs/Projects/Goals meetup in Ballston Food Court
Meetup topic was never addressed as the number of people present at any time during the regular meetup period was never significant. 3 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 20/10/13 16:58 | Oct 20 - Rehash of last week's meetup topic, again was never really discussed at length. 5 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 27/10/13 18:39 | Oct 27 - Robin Hanson gave an intro on anthropics (Doomsday argument, SSA/SIA, the Great Filter, etc), and open discussion afterwards. ~12 people came, and a further 3-4 people left early for various reasons. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 03/11/13 20:23 | 11/03 - Games meetup at private residence in VA, 13 people attended.
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 10/11/13 17:00 | 11/10 - All proposed topics were superseded by a few rounds of Race for the Galaxy and Zendo, then general conversation. 6 people came. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 17/11/13 18:54 | 11/17 - The majority of the meetup time was spent on meta-meetup issues and topics, etc. (and was quite productive!), and the rest of the time spent discussing policy-oriented philanthropy (see some recent posts on the Givewell blog) and on games. 8 people came. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Eileen Martz | 25/11/13 17:02 | 11/24/13 - Ostensibly a games meetup, but only a few games of Dominion were played. Delicious pie was had and also much conversation. 11 people attended. On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Philip Lin <clou...@gmail.com> wrote:
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Robin Z | 08/12/13 19:00 | 12/8/2013 - Fermi estimate meetup in the Luce Foundation Center, as
the Kogod Courtyard was closed in preparation for an event the following day. A few games were played in addition to the estimation exercises. 7 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Eileen Martz | 16/12/13 07:22 | 12/15/2013 - Games meetup. We met in the Luce Center again due to the tables being cleared out of the courtyard. We played Powergrid, Zendo, and Roundominoes. 7 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 22/12/13 19:01 | 12/22 - We split into two groups, one group doing goals discussion and analyzing, and the other playing a game of Power Grid. (Goal subtasking: dividing up a goal into more manageable parts, including scheduling and such. Goal factoring: Figuring out what it is you really want from the goals you have, and if there's a better way to fulfill those desires.) 15 people attended. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 29/12/13 18:58 | 12/29 - Iterated prisoner's dilemma was played by people for cupcake prizes, and there was another Power Grid game group. Also it was someone's birthday, which explains the presence of cupcakes in the first place. 'Happy Birthday' was sung, cupcakes were had by everyone. 15 people attended. We eventually settled on rules for iterated prisoner's dilemma to use pairs of dice (d[N], then d[N-2], d[N-4], and so on, where N is the number of players) to randomly select matches every round. We also experimented with various systems of die-rolling to determine the number of rounds such that players had some info on when the game would end, but wouldn't know exactly how many rounds per tournament. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 05/01/14 19:07 | Jan 05 - Games meetup - games played include Dominion, Battlestar Galactica, Puzzle Strike, and possibly others. 15-ish people were here.
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 12/01/14 19:30 | Jan 12 - Open discussion on effective altruism: pros and cons of the focus on hard data and measurable effects, and on saving lives directly vs indirect effects such as education initiatives. Some personal ethical systems were also mentioned/discussed. 13 people showed up. Also, the next meetup will involve potatoes. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 19/01/14 19:29 | Jan 19 - A potato-identifying activity/game happened, three rounds or so. We had a short session of calibration/measurement, since someone had brought a scale for weighing things. Afterwards we played a few games (Dixit, We Didn't Playtest This, Reef Encounter), and some people went to dinner. 9 people came. Notes on potatoes thing: We had about 6 participants and 11? potatoes, each one numbered for independent identification. Each person would write a description of a randomly selected potato, and someone else would try to match the description with a potato. We didn't discuss what did or didn't work in too much depth... It helped to identify "distinctive" features or patterns of features: bumps, eyes, dents/scratches/etc, but occasionally features ended up not being distinctive, or descriptions were not unique enough. Several potatoes had unique shapes, but even if they didn't, most had a long axis and thus the ends were frequently referred to as places to look for features. IDing potatoes seemed to be very hit-or-miss; most of the time people got it on the first guess, or else had to guess many times... I don't recall any times when it took exactly two guesses, although I could be wrong.
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 26/01/14 17:38 | Jan 26 - Games meetup - Dominion, Zendo, Pandemic. 6 people came - probably low due to "Learn to code" event Saturday, which could easily be considered a meetup on its own, going by the RSVP count. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 02/02/14 19:04 | Feb 02 - General social meetup, some (but not a whole lot of) discussion on HPMOR and/or Worm, the nominal meetup topic. Some games happened, because people brought games. Notable were a few experimental plays of cooperative Tsuro, trying to keep as many players alive as possible. 12 people came.
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| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | David Simon | 02/02/14 19:41 | Phil, thanks again for recording all this data. We have a lot of records now, maybe we should do some analysis pretty soon? --You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "LessWrong DC" group. |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 02/02/14 19:57 | I've thought about writing some kind of one-year retrospective post for LW, but it never got off the ground... |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | David Steinberg | 02/02/14 21:08 | We can do statistics to it! Who would be interested in collaborating on this, possibly at next week's meetup? |
| Re: Proposal: Tracking meetup attendance and activities | Philip Lin | 09/02/14 18:46 | From this point forward, records will be kept in this Google doc. People interested in doing statistics to stuff: Roger has extracted the attendance numbers from this thread already. |