MoCo MD Meetup Support

If you are local and are even thinking this *might* be of interest to you,
Please fill out this user-preferences poll, even if you do not currently intend to join

[OKCupid.com users, please read notice at bottom]

About This Community
Created January 10, 2006, this community is a volunteer effort to enhance and assist those users of meetup.com who are LJ users and who live in the vicinity of Washington DC, *especially* Montgomery County Maryland.

This community is not affiliated with meetup.com, its owners or operators.

Why?
A couple years ago I joined a website called "meetup.com" because someone on LJ made it sound like a good idea that we should all have a structured way to meet up socially, to meet face to face the people you see commenting in local communities or your friends journals, but have not had occasion to meet.

Personally I have not found the meetup.com website very easy to use, but the idea is still a good one. Those of us using that website need to have a way to communicate and discuss possibly venues as a group and that's why I created this community.

While the primary goal was not expressly to create a "singles" meetup, it is safe to say that at least *some* LJ meetups will be announced as such, though it should not be assumed by anyone that people who attend these meetups are necessarily single, interested, or even straight.

What if I don't live there?
While this LJ community exists primarily to help those of us who actually joined meetups.com I will probably not object if people wish to join this community to learn more. I had intended this community primarily for those in Montgomery County MD or anywhere DC Metro but are interested in taking part in meetups in or near Montgomery County MD.

If you live much more than a couple hours from DC and are still interested in LJ meetups, you may wish to join another community I found called ljmeetups which appears to cater to users all around the world. This is the only such other community like this I've found so far. If you know of others by all means comment to this community and tell us about them!

Expanding on this idea:
For right now I suggest we coordinate from here. *If* this community grows in size large enough to make it difficult for LJ users in Montgomery County Maryland to effectively coordinate here, then it would be practical for others to create other communties such as baltimoremeetup and richmondmeetup as needed to help coordinate other meetup users and reduce the coordination load on this community. If any of you in those areas wish to start up similar communities go right ahead, I'm not claiming ownership of the concept.

A little more about me in case you are curious:
This is not the first community I've created on LJ with the goal of having physical meetings of LJ members. This is the first community I've created to bring together people who have not already met or who would otherwise meet.

The other communities are less "public" than this one is intended to be. It is my hope that I can bring to this community the experience I have gained in the other communities.

I will feel I've done something positive even if this community is only ever used to publicize meetup.com meetups which are announced there, but I will feel equally happy if the result of this effort is that local area LJ users use this community to announce public parties of LJ users who are not members of meetup.com

For OKCupid.com members who like the idea of a meetup party for that site, I've created one, okcupidmeetupdc, which is essentially open for membership. You can join if you wish but don't expect to see any development (like cool polls) there for at least two weeks. In the meantime I'm advising members interesting in that community to join this one.