MetaTalk posts tagged with irl

SF to Japan virtual walk continues

Bella Donna — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 22:10:26 -0800

Howdy, folks. As some of you may recall, there is a virtual stroll (amble, arch...ery, ramble) from San Francisco to Japan going on. The first IRL listing has expired. The new IRL listing has dropped us to 3 participants from 11. That is fine but perhaps you meant to join up to log your walking (skipping, etc.) time for fun and forgot. Or perhaps you never heard about it. I am here to say there is still plenty of time to participate in the soon-to-be-legendary Peripatetic Persistent Pirate Puffins' Pacific Peregrination (2). Join us!

Enabling Notifications for Online Meetups Pony

Ghidorah — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 20:11:05 -0800

Activity has pretty much stopped on IRL for obvious reasons, but weirdly, the Tokyo Mefite community has never met nearly as much! We're heading into our 9th straight week of meetups (on Zoom) which is a full on record for us, but leads me to this humble pony request: if the poster of the IRL meetup chooses "online" as the type of meetup, no notification memails get sent, and the meetup doesn't show in the sidebar on MetaTalk. Can we change that? In a lot of the check-in threads, one of the common themes is the pressure of isolation, and honestly, the Sunday Night Japan Mefite Meet has been a pretty solid help for me, and (I'm assuming) for the other people who come. We're open to all (and Stancyk actually joined us from Ohio once!) but it's really, really easy to miss them as there are no notifications for the online setting, and no mention in the MeTa sidebar. If at all possible, I'd love for my pony to have: 1) an option for sending out notifications for online meetups by either time-zone or region. I get that adding a potentially spamable notification isn't maybe the greatest thing, but it would be nice to have some sort of way to get memails to people who might be interested in that. 2) placing online IRL meetups in the MeTa sidebar. This would definitely increase visibility somewhat, but then it also runs MeTa being a part of the site that maybe people don't visit as much (though maybe that's changed?). Ideally, my pony would have both of these things, a lustrous mane, and fire breath, but I guess I'd settle for the getting added to the upcoming cue. In discussions with some of the Japan Mefites, we've talked a bit about how this might be a good time to raise the IRL profile a bit, especially in regards to online meetups. As it stands, advice from the mods has been to not tag it as online, but with various folks taking up the posting duties, that doesn't always happen, and it would be a help if the process was a little clearer or easier to use. Obvious there's a ton of things going on, and priorities don't always mesh, but honestly, I think this is sort of a timely thing, and could increase the overall user experience.

(Staying) home is where the heart is.

sexyrobot — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 15:45:16 -0800

OK. It's officially a pandemic. Should MeFi IRL suspend operations for the time being?

IRL pony request: participant notification

Johnny Wallflower — Sun, 26 May 2019 14:48:13 -0800

The creator of an IRL event has the option to be notified by email when a comment is added to the post. How much trouble would it be to add notifications to those who are attending (including Maybes)? Is this something others would find useful?

Why no meetup photos?

cilantro — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 06:16:40 -0800

I used to love looking at meetup photos and putting faces with names, but it doesn't seem like anyone posts them anymore. Is this because people are more worried about privacy, or is it because Flickr is completely terrible now, or a combination? Or is it just because pictures are so easy/ubiquitous that no one really takes them anymore? I don't know what the answer is (and I won't be contributing because I am WAY too shy to ever go to a meetup) but I would love it if people got into the habit again. Would allowing photos in IRL posts be a pony too far?

Star Trek: The Cruise III

BekahVee — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 08:25:40 -0800

Star Trek: The Cruise III -- Are you going? Are you excited? Do you want to meet up with other mefites? I'm going on the cruise, and in an attempt to mash interests - is anyone else going? Have you been before/have any advice for noobs (it's my first time, both for this cruise, and any cruise!)? Want to identify any other mefites on board, maybe awkwardly wave, or have an actual social encounter (I'm more the awkward wave type myself, but I'm happy to enable you other social folks talking to each other and all.)?

icecream meetup season

aniola — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 10:36:07 -0800

We did icecream meetups in July a couple years ago. It was great fun. Let's do it again!!! perhaps with fresh fruit, too!

Total Eclipse of the MetaFilter: US August 2017 edition

Wordshore — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 16:13:48 -0800

A catch-all Meta for MeFites to organise, enquire, wail about accommodation prices and relate their experiences about the August 21st 2017 solar eclipse which crosses the continental USA (total eclipse in 14 states, partial eclipse others and in three other continents). Please don't look at the sun directly or with dodgy glasses, but you can use your smartphone - though just don't miss it. Exclusive, traffic will be nuts, and some will do the Carbondale double. Disclaimer: other eclipses are available for other dates and countries. Obligatory link. On MetaFilter: - TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE STAMPS WILL REVEAL HIDDEN MOON IMAGE - Love the Eclipse You Are Given - "In the year the cheeto ascends the throne, the sun will hide in shame" On MeFi IRL: - Carbondale eclipse viewing meetup? On AskMeFi: - (New York City) Where in the neighborhood do we watch the eclipse? - Eclipse viewing on Cape Cod? - (Multiple location) Help us eclipse! - Can we squeeze in a vacation for everyone? - Campsites for the August eclipse in Oregon, or other options? - Things To Do In Boise After Skywolf Has Devoured Daystar - Black Hole Sun Won't You... Please Plan My Eclipse Viewing For Me - (Interstate I80, Nebraska, driving very fast) Time vs Distance - Stops on a summer ramble from Portland, OR to Casper, WY? - How to spend the night before the eclipse this August in Jackson WY? - (Oregon) Just HOW crazy is the eclipse viewing going to be? - Help me watch Eclipse 2017 near Portland OR - Where to star-gaze in Nevada? - (Northeast US+) What are the best space/astronomy-related activities and events? - Solar Eclipse Road Trip to Grand Island, Nebraska - Any tips?

IRL post achiving pre-event

pjern — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 07:55:13 -0800

This IRL post concerns an event with a long lead time. It's been closed/archived long before the event. Should we rethink archiving posts long before the event? [I tried to use the contact form, but got some weird error page about an invalid construct]

Mefites organizing for the Women's March

LobsterMitten — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 08:21:56 -0800

For Mefites planning to march in this Saturday's big march for women's rights, there are IRL meetup threads for several cities: the main march in Washington DC and sister marches in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia - or other cities. Just posting this to give a heads-up to people still settling their plans for this weekend. Also to collect all these IRL meetup posts in one place in case that makes coordinating easier, or to share notes/ideas across marches. I know in the DC thread people are talking about using Firechat (explanation of Firechat) as a way to communicate on the day-of, in case cell service is unavailable. If there end up being Mefi meetups at marches in other cities, link 'em in here and I can edit the post to add them.

Any interest in a MeFi day of service or volunteering?

kat518 — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 08:15:07 -0800

Basically, I think it's rad that the folks in Chicago are cooking brunch for families at the Ronald McDonald House and think it'd be cool if other folks did similar things in their own cities, perhaps on one designated day. Just a thought, would like to know if that's been suggested before.

In case you missed the memo

aniola — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 21:08:15 -0800

Consider heading over to IRL and posting a mefi ice cream social meetup Plant-based icecream socials are totally cool, too!

Balancing IRL and Askme

RaRa-SpaceRobot — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 22:01:04 -0800

Is it impolite or unethical (or even possible because of the rsvp function) to attend an IRL event to meet people and not reveal your online name? I'm trying to reconcile the desire to meet fellow mefites with my very strong inclination to maintain what web anonymity I have. This seems like an impossible task. Is there any way to navigate this without being or feeling shady? I'd like to meet people, and be sincere about my real-life identity, without it getting linked to my online profile, comments, etc. (unless or until I am ready, which may be never).

Announcing More Color for the Classic Theme

pb — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 09:45:58 -0800

Last week we discussed adding more color to the classic theme and we set the wheels in motion. Today those wheels are up and running. MetaFilter has four themes you can choose from to style the site: classic, plain, modern, and modern dark. Here are the changes we made today: 1.) FanFare, IRL, and Jobs now have a color scheme in the classic theme. Before today they had a white background in the classic theme. This will bring those subsites in line with "the blue", "the green", and the other sites that have a colorful background in that theme. 2.) FanFare, IRL, and Jobs now have a strip of unique color at the top of the page in the plain theme, just like the rest of the subsites already had. The background will still be white in the plain theme as it is for every site, but it should be a little easier to identify which site you're on by color. 3.) IRL has a new color scheme in the modern dark theme. We tweaked the colors to be a bit darker so they line up better with the other subsites. We didn't change the favicons for FanFare, IRL, and Jobs but that is still on our to-do list. In other theme news, we tweaked the way tags look in the modern and modern dark themes. As the page gets smaller the way long tags are truncated will expand or contract accordingly. So overall you should see longer tags more often depending on how wide your browser window usually is. We didn't change tags in the classic or plain themes. There could still be some bugs lurking in our colorization so please let us know here if you spot something off.

IRL Regional Event Alerts

pb — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 14:29:34 -0800

Today we added the ability to make an IRL event regional so that IRL alerts for the event go out to a wider audience. And now in addition to letting us know what distance you consider nearby, you can let us know what distance you consider regional. A few months ago we had a discussion about some problems with IRL alerts and regional events: Pony Request: IRL Regional Meetup tools. For destination events like camping or festivals where people drive hundreds of miles, there wasn't a good way to notify a wider group of people via IRL alerts that the event was posted. We just added an option to make an event regional when you post a new IRL event. This will send the alert about the event to a wider group of folks based on a new Regional is x miles setting in site preferences. We’ve set the default regional alert distance to 300 miles, but that's going to be too big or too small for some folks. So just click Preferences at the top of the page and set what you feel like is a good distance for destination-style events you might be interested in. (Need to convert between miles and kilometers? Google works well!) - Don’t care about regional events? That's ok, you can set your regional distance to zero, and you'll only be notified about events that fall inside your Nearby radius, regardless of whether the event organizer marks them as regional. - Want to turn off IRL notices entirely? You can do that by unchecking the Receive IRL alerts? in your Preferences. - Don’t currently use IRL alerts? You’ll be unaffected by the change. If you decide you’d like to try them out, check Receive IRL alerts? in your Preferences. Regional events at IRL have been posted a few times each year and we don't expect that volume to change, but we’ll monitor use of the new Regional feature to make sure folks are using it appropriately, and provide feedback as necessary. We hope this new alert system helps more people participate in regional events when they do happen.

Long Running IRL Meetups?

Going To Maine — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 10:28:23 -0800

The classic Chicago Goat / Frog meetup is losing one portion of its evening thanks to the vagaries of the property market.
This seems like a meetup that’s been around forever, and so I thought it would be good to ask about long-running local meet-ups. Do mefites in your area regularly get together for a specific event? Have you been doing it for a long while? More than a year? Please tell.

Pony request: IRL Regional Meetup tools

hippybear — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 09:22:19 -0800

At a recent MeFi regional campout, there was some discussion about the need for the ability to post campouts that can somehow be regional. As in, it would have been helpful for this campout to be announced to IRL-interested folks who live in Portland, Seattle, and areas of eastern WA and OR, people who might not have their IRL radius set very wide because they mostly want to do local meets, but a big annual thing like this might be of interest even if it involves travel. The immediate work-around suggestion is, of course, to post the meet at its actual location and then get people in the individual areas to post IRL pages that all point to the actual meet page, sort of dummy pages to get people's attention. But it would be nice to have some ability to designate certain meets as "regional" and then somehow be able to select IRL "locations" in which to announce the meet. I could also see a need for sometimes maybe national meet announcements, such as if MeFites wanted to arrange to find each other at one of the major music festivals. Or, as a historical example, we've talked about doing a major MetaFilter camping trip or something. I'd preemptively suggest that there be a moderated queue for such things. I wouldn't necessarily see the need for moderation of the regional meets unless it becomes obvious it's getting abused. Does this seem like something that is a peculiar interest for this one corner of the US because we have this annual campout thing we're trying to do? Or would this be a more generally useful feature for IRL to have in general?

(re)request: delete IRL

scalefree — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 09:48:43 -0800

I have a proposed IRL event that never happened & I'd like an easier way to delete it than contacting the mods. This has been discussed before & I like the suggestion from that thread to add a "never happened" category, which was never implemented. Is this possible/desirable?

Opting out of series of IRL posts.

youcancallmeal — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:17:57 -0800

Pony request: an option to opt out of IRL posts that come up on a regular basis. There's a weekly DC IRL meetup that comes up in my Mefi Mail every week that I'd love to opt out of if given the chance. I have not, nor will I ever be interested in weekly Star Trek, but I'd hate to miss out on a meetup that I would be interested in due to the weekly post about this happy hour. Can we set something up or is there already a way that I'm missing where recurring meetups have a special option that allows people to permanently opt out of them?

IRL pony: Making meetup locations private

ardgedee — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 08:20:56 -0800

Can we have a way to optionally restrict the visibility of a meetup location to the participants who've confirmed their attendance? Or to at least limit the visibility to logged-in mefites? Currently there's no way to, for example, announce a house party without the whole world seeing where the host lives.

How about notifications of proposed meetups?

desjardins — Sat, 17 May 2014 09:14:03 -0800

I have my profile set to receive notifications of IRL meetups within 100 miles, but I would also like to get notified about proposed meetups within the same distance. Who knows, maybe adding one more person can shift it from "proposed" to "let's do this thing."

how to host a successful meetup when new in town

partly squamous and partly rugose — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 11:04:45 -0800

Hello all :) I would like to post a meetup event. I am new to Halifax (Nova Scotia) and several AskMeFi responses suggested this as a good way to make friends. I would like to know the behavior Metafilter participants expect of the "hosts" ... More inside ... I would like to post a meetup event. I am in my early 30s and new to Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada). Several AskMeFi responses in the past have suggested this as a good way to make new friends. I do not know anyone here nor am I familiar with the area outside downtown Halifax. I would like to know the sort of behavior participants expect of "hosts" so that the meetup makes those who come feel comfortable (even if no one comes I do expect to be there having a drunken good time, in case someone shows up, and I am by nature very friendly). My specific concerns are as follows: How do you choose a venue when you are new to the city and don't know what places are easy to get to? Do you aim for a low key bar - and if so do you make reservations based on who responds to your post? How should the cheque be split - or do I pay for everything? How long do you wait if no one comes at the suggested time? How do you react if the only person who shows up is annoyed that there is not a large gathering - or if they are nasty towards you? Sorry for the silly questions, but I would like to find out the protocol prior to posting. Any suggestions offered are appreciated. The past advice I have received on MetaTalk has been excellent and has encouraged me to post more often on this site. I am eager to hear any advice regarding this situation, positive or negative. I did not e-mail the Moderators directly as I feel community feedback would offer multiple viewpoints and thus the best suggestions. I will post a meetup shortly. Thank you for your help :).

Camp Mefi Update

Miko — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 19:02:08 -0800

For those of you wondering what the status of the Camp MeFi project is, please pull a log up to the crackling fire. Full update inside. In the early half of last year, we started talking about the possibility of arranging a large-scale MeFi meetup that would take the form of a weekend at summer camp. A small group of us agreed to investigate feasibility and work on the project to see if we could pull it off for 2014. A valorous vanguard stepped forward to discuss in detail some ideas for an East Coast camp weekend. They deserve accolades and honors: thanks go to Biblio, Asperity, OnlyConnect, Gingersnap, Jessamyn, Polyhymnia, YoungerGirl44, and Usonian. We identified a great potential location in NJ and started talking about the tasks and coordination needed in some detail. The upshot we had to face was that none of us are able to take on a central coordinating role this year. And though there are a lot of willing hands to help if delegated to, one or two really dedicated people need to sit in the driver's seat to make sure all the little pieces are being done. We all have various life things going on that make it hard to take on, as Jessamyn put it, "a part-time job's worth" of tracking, organizing, and communicating, which it would be. We did manage to make a lot of progress on basic needs: like, what would the equipment, food, and accommodation needs be, what would some general policies be, what level of activities would make sense, what kind of facility is needed, how does the budget work, pricing level, who is willing to lend a hand with what specific task areas. etc. We are happy to share all our data and progress so far with anyone who is interested in reviewing it and/or shouldering the project to carry forward; just MeMail me. Usonian was also kind enough to create a website which can function as a central planning repository (empty now, but usable in future). The existing plan is still a good basic structure to revisit if we elect to pursue the idea in 2015 or beyond. It just looks like the 2014 planning season is going to get away from us and we just don't have that "traffic manager(s) and overall visionar(ies)" role filled. One alternative idea has come up, which is simply to do a similar thing informally by picking a public campground, declaring a weekend "MeFi Camping Meetup time," and posting the details. That way no one would have to coordinate centrally, everyone could manage their own food and campsite, but there could be get-togethers around the campgrounds and daytime activities for people to join in on. Seems like a great idea that's somewhat simpler than taking over a camp facility for a weekend to run a centrally managed event. And multiple ones could run over the course the camping season, in different regions. Something to consider. So thanks to everyone who tackled the project and gave it some really good thought. It was a pleasure to get to know a few others a bit better and enjoy their good sense and creative thinking on this big project.

IRL reminders?

raihan_ — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 00:40:46 -0800

An automated reminder or some way to export the meetup item to iCal/gCal would be helpful. I've actually forgotten about two recent meetups (sorry, all), and am thinking that some form of reminder would be helpful for these kinds of things. All opt-in, of course; wouldn't want anyone being hit w/ spam. Thanks!

Request for a bantam horse

aniola — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:19:59 -0800

It might be handy if recent activity would say who is attending and maybe attending IRL events. If it really is a pony and not a behemoth of a horse.