The Meetup phenomenon, which is now substantial and longstanding enough to be more of a cultural change than a flash in the pan, continues to impress me. Even more so than tools like LinkedIn, Meetups have changed the nature of professional networking, making it more informal, diverse, and decentralized. Last night, statistics consultant (and cheap eats guru) Jared Lander and I presented a talk on a statistical technique tangentially related to my professional work (more closely associated wi...