Just a quick update, Glad to see this did go the route of decent discussion.
So I made it to the meetup, about 10 minutes late. Nothing better than walking into a room of strangers late, a dozen sets of eyes fixed on you. That's where the awkwardness ended, everyone was friendly made some space and carried on business as usual from what I could tell.
Overall just a group of people talking about all manner of projects, they are either interested in or invested in. Found out there was an attempt at hosting a conference in my Province that has been postponed until June of next year. Met a couple more BTC oldtimers, who had some interesting tales to share.
All in all it was a good time. I'll keep trying to get out to some of these but the bi-weekly meetings but could possibly swing one every 6 weeks or so. It is about a 5 hour round trip, but this stretched into a 3 1/2 hour hangout and chat which was nice. It was good to meet up with some like-minded people and hear some of the different perspectives on things.
I'll read through again later and respond to any questions I missed, when I wake up this evening.
Edit:
What do you expect? Unless you have some project crypto related that you would like to promote, or join, I don't see much of a reason to participate in those meetings. Maybe if someone interesting is going there, such as Vitalik or Antonopoulos or whatever..
Honestly me and crypto reminds me of when I was a skater in my teens and moved to the country. No one cared what I kickflipped, dropped or slid. The internet is great for connecting people but lacks the actual connections. Sometimes on the forum I find it difficult to still treat people like a human being, this way I find it helps with the listening and being open to new ideas. Mostly I'm not the kind of guy to cut you off mid sentence and tell you how stupid your idea is. It's easier to listen for a while and discuss then move on.
where do people find ads for meetups? is there a board/website dedicated to this? the bitcointalk meetup board seems pretty dead.
Meetup.com if you live in any mid-to-large city, or facebook, if you have an account there it might pop up into your suggestions somewhere if fb knows enough about you. Although it must be noted that at this point most meetups you're likely to find aren't going to be exclusively about Bitcoin, often it's about 'blockchain', or cryptocurrencies/tokens in general.
Pretty much nailed it. I just googled crypto meetup and the city name. That's how I found this one on meetup.com, as well as the other one lol. So my advice is to message the admin if you can to make sure it's still on.