Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Ya. Bad time of year for this stuff. I had a concert in Portland last night, nobody to stay with so I rented an AirBnb. Driving in the dark and rain is awful for me.

This morning driving home from Portland, the road spray from other cars was as bad as heavy fog even though after I exited the freeway I turned my wipers off. Crazy.

In this post-Covid era of Zoom calls, is anyone interested in an online meetup>

I would be interested in an online meetup. But I've noticed that large video conferences tend to be dominated by those most willing to "butt in" to the conversation next. It is also difficult to have organic side conversations.

Maybe these problems could be alleviated via moderation or prepared agendas.

Edit:
I have lead many "Lean Coffee" formatted meetings in person and online. I did those for Agile Retrospectives, but maybe it could be adapted for social meetups.

The extroverts usually do a lot of the talking at the IRL meetups as well. There's just no stopping them

I keep meetups sufficiently low density so the background noise of the side conversations don't elevate the noise level enough to make it hard to hear people. I have no experience with videoconferencing beyond 3 people. Usually IRL meetups will have some prepared agenda in the sense that people bring written questions they want to ask so they don't forget in all the excitement.

Yeah, as an introvert meet-ups are hard if it's a big circle. The talk can (is) dominated by a few. Compounding the introversion, I take some time to think about responses where others who don't have that habit will just interrupt and carry on the conversation. Those individuals can be a fun novelty for me, but after a while it's like eating too much sugar.

I'd love to participate in online meetup!
Let's do it, c'mon

I too am interested, and would do my best to setup a zoom call if there is at least two other participants. Breakout rooms of ~3 people seem the best way, although I'm open to other suggestions.