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About 12 people showed up to our first meeting. Yay! Several more contacted me (Chuck) at the last minute saying that they couldn’t make it this time, but would show up next time.
We started somewhat awkwardly by going around to introduce ourselves, then chatting about what we want out of these meetings. Rather than having structured presentations, it seemed like the general consensus was that people wanted a space where they could have a single-group free-form discussion, but perhaps seeded with a particular topic. Things got more interesting during the second hour when we just started talking. The conversation naturally flowed between topics like:
We agreed to have our next meeting in the 2-week timeframe.