Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion meetup.com - anyone used this for groups?

I just found this on the web, maybe it is old news, has anyone else tried this? I found it while searching for a chess club, and did attend one I found on it, with ds8. The meet up was as described, and pretty good. Just a group of people playing chess at a local coffee bar.

http://www.meetup.com/

It looks like a really easy way to get a club going, if people are in need of some way to connect with other GT parents/kids or any other groups...
Even if you already have a school club going, it might be a helpful tool to keep people up to date. Not sure, haven't tried it from the side of organizing something.

We conduct online meetings for the office at www.gotomeeting.com. It would be a little tough to use for chess as the admin has to transfer use of the keyboard to each member. I've never tried to have more than one active member at a time.

Meetup.com is great. My husband used it to find a computer group that eventually led to him getting his current job. It's also how we found a local chapter of Parenting Beyond Belief, a group of atheist/nonbeliever families who get together for social events. I'm sure it's being used to organize gifted groups somewhere.

I was going to buy the book called "Parenting Beyond Belief" do you recommend it?
We tried "Meetup" once, but it wasn't a gifted group, just a playgroup. I was very out of place, about 15 years older than any other moms and significantly more educated, it was in a small city in the South.
But, we've moved and a gifted group might be a good try sometime. I did have the kids join MENSA to try to meet people there.
I would be interested to see if others have had success with "meetup".

I was a little disappointed by the book Parenting Beyond Belief. It's a collection of essays by a number of writers with a range of perspectives, and some pieces are better than others. I'd say read it but get it from the library. The same author has another book, Raising Freethinkers, that just came out this year. Looks interesting.

Oh, just to be clear, the meetup.com is just a database of groups that anyone can initiate, and anyone can search based on keywords and zip codes...and then people meet for real, face to face (!!) It's sort of scary, but the chess thing went ok - the location was so public I figured it had to be ok.



There is a gt kids group for underachieving teens, for instance, near us, but that wouldn't be a great fit, as we don't have a teen. But I was toying with starting a group. Just curious if others have given it a try.