[trgn]

I host a meetup for telecommuters for the same reasons you're starting this up.

Given it's Meetup, there's no "auditioning". The hardest part of that is that the demographic is so enormously wide wrt age, gender, cultural and educational background, profession... it's tough for real connections to grow for people just expecting to drop in just once. But come/host consistently, and eventually clumps of people do start to gel. So you're right, consistency is key.

Also - the more simple we keep it, happy hour, dinner, the more people seem to enjoy it. Honestly, it's just an excuse to leave the house and booze at this point.

I'm thinking "auditioning" may not be a bad thing if you want to avoid some of the dragnet effects of just being open like Meetup. Explicitly going for the yuppie crowd is just a hard thing to advertise on an open platform. ie. nobody's going to show up at the "26 to 38 creatives and dev adjacent telecommuters that live in the cool neighborhood, doctors allowed if they leave their attitudes at home"-Meetup, although that was I was originally hoping for. But on closed platform you'll be able to curate better.

Good luck dude!