Quote Originally Posted by fogelbise View Post
Sageous, you showing would be awesome! I was thinking of something on the casual side of things like meeting an old friends over lunch. I see some pros and cons of something more structured. What do you think?
How about casual with an agenda?

Yes, casual is good, and it would be nice to meet and chat with fellow dreamers about, well, whatever we're chatting about. Unfortunately, unguided chat tends to stray quickly, to the point where the attendees are in separate cocktail-party-huddles discussing not dreams but things like politics, the weather, hometowns, or how good/crappy the food is at this place. Such a gathering would be nice, sure, but it would be nicer, I think, if we were able to take advantage of a bunch of dedicated dreamers actually gathering in one place.

I think people would be attending your meets in order to mine the thoughts and experiences of their compatriots, so something to keep those thoughts at the surface is a good idea. Perhaps as host you could poll attendees ahead of time to see what they want to discuss most, or what they most want to get out of their time at the meeting. Then, when we meet, simply hold a list of the most common (or interesting) topics from that poll in your pocket, and pull it out now and then to suggest something more interesting to discuss than the weather.

A while back a group of LaBerge Dreamcamp alumni would gather in Manhattan for drinks and a meal every few months, just to chat about dreaming -- and a couple of these guys were very advanced, and brimming with acquired knowledge -- but the trouble was, we simply chatted: it was so nice to join with kindred souls that we quickly forgot what had brought us together (LD'ing), and just chatted about things like politics, the weather, or how good/crappy the food was at the restaurant we visited. The visits were nice, but we never walked away feeling like they were more than visits.

So, sort of a structured casual, I think...