I attend a lot of meetups every month. When I walk into a meetup, I generally won't know what kind of audience will be there. I may know the subject and/or the presentation(s) for the evening-- which is usually good enough for me to say yes or no to going.
Last year, I attended Chicago's Barcamp. It was also a nice event. But I didn't feel compelled to stay for the day because the presentations for the day wasn't of great interest to me. And of course it was a really nice day outside.
Anyway, barcamps, like this geek dinner, I walked in not know exactly what I was going to see. As typical barcamp fashion, the event is what you make of it, or rather, what the audience makes of it-- completely. I now find myself asking if it was worth the nearly one-hour drive through LA rush hour to get there. It could be that I'm just a little socialed-out lately. Going forward, I prefer meetups with a specific agenda, where I know more information on what I'm getting myself into.
I don't mean to say I had a bad time. I enjoyed the meetup. It's just that not all topics in conversations were of great interest all the time. I really do see myself enjoying more agenda-based meetups rather than something generic.
UPDATE: Just realized that Randal L. Schwartz was at the meetup last night! He wrote
Learning Perl, which helped me out when I was an undergraduate!
