The participants are the final judges, but I believe everyone who attended our first Chicago meetup had a good time. The venue turned out better than expected, in that the hotel gave us a quiet and very large room and as far as I could tell, was pretty good about turning around drinks orders.
The event ran from 5:00 PM till 11:30 PM, and one reader estimated that there were 50 guests at 6:15 PM and another thought we had 75 people over the course of the evening. I was given a book (Gary Brecher’s War Nerd), some wild black raspberry jam (which I can report is very tasty), and a potato. The wife of the guy who gave me the potato, which was from his garden, was horrified (bear in mind he also gave me the jam). But since I gather potatoes are among the most pesticide-heavy crops (red raspberries and red peppers also high on the list), I may be in possession of one of the few “safe to eat” potatoes in America.
One request: a few readers were taking pictures, and some included people standing next to me. One who believes he was picked up in a shot wrote me an alarmed note about it (“And am I now in some NSA database somewhere?”).
So all you photo-takers: some requests (and in the future these will be ground rules):
1. Please do not upload any of these pictures to Facebook
2. Please do not tag them with any names associated with Naked Capitalism, including the site’s name and mine. Hopefully “NC” will do if you need something approximate.
Thanks again!
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It was great to meet fellow Naked Capitalism fans in Chicago, and great to meet you, Yves. Thanks for putting this together.
Enjoyable cocktail hour. I didn’t expect a crowd, but it seemed like people were curious and wanted to converse. So the turnout was indeed healthy.
Then I went to dinner with friends, where the election still loomed and I was accused of being an agent of the patriarchy.
I’m not so panicked about the photo: I would just like to know who took it. After all, I wouldn’t have posed with Yves Smith if I didn’t want it recorded.
Yes the venue was perfect (Friday night at a business-traveler hotel is probably the best/least-busy night for this sort of thing). I made a new friend; we talked for 2 hours straight!
I was impressed that Yves traveled to Chicago solely for this meet-up!
If you came to Chicago for a meetup, how about southern Arizona? I’d be happy to organize one in Tucson.
And when will the LA ( or Orange County) meet up be? Hope we are not left out of this great social event.
And another vote for OC.
How about Norway?
Atlanta?
if the Falcons are playing, I’ll come down for that :D
Really wished I could have stayed longer. But very happy to break my duck as it were, get to chat with a few really cool people from the readership/commentariat and engage with you Yves! Looking forward to the next one I can attend!
Sydney ?
Thank you for arranging this meet up and for providing an opportunity to meet other Chicago readers/commenters. Your work is very important to me, and continues to be a source of provocative discussion. Another ongoing benefit is the recommendations of books, essays, music, etc. I am reading Empire of Cotton, which another NC reader recommended.
Thanks to all of the commentariat, subscribers and to our fabulous bloggers and guest writers.