[Foe]

Good question. Most people read the paper on their own time, and we meet over lunch. The meetings themselves are just an hour, so it's not a massive time block. I've found that the people who show up are the ones who are genuinely curious and would be reading this stuff anyway (and sometimes just need a commitment/accountability to do it). Having a group gives them a reason to do it on a schedule.

[oa335]

> The meetings themselves are just an hour, so it's not a massive time block

How exactly are the meetings structured? I.e is someone leading discussions? Does each person go around and share thoughts? Etc

[Foe]

We usually start with quick overall impressions, then go around with a few prompts: "what's something new you learned?", "what didn't you like?", and "what didn't you fully understand?" (every paper has something, whether it's the evaluation methodology or some algorithm detail). That last question tends to drive most of the discussion because people chime in and build on each other's answers. Sometimes you get lucky with domain expertise in the room. For example, when we read "What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory"[1], one of the attendees was a former Intel engineer who spent their career in memory systems. They answered questions the rest of us wouldn't have even known to ask.

[1] https://people.freebsd.org/~lstewart/articles/cpumemory.pdf

[zihotki]

That implies that you have a fixed time for lunch and also chat during lunch. I may be the minority but I prefer to eat when I'm hungry and focus on the food instead of chatting. And there is also allergies, as a celiac, I have big troubles eating together with others - they may accidently contaminate my food

[tanjtanjtanj]

I’m actually curious here, not trying to question your experience but does other people’s food regularly contaminate your food when you eat at the same table as them?

I’ve lived with a celiac sufferer before and I’ve never heard of something that extreme, but everyone’s different.

[fc417fc802]

The degree of sensitivity of allergies varies widely. For example there are people who only have a problem after consuming a large scoop of peanut butter but there are also those who will end up in the hospital from trace amounts that you'd have difficulty spotting with the naked eye.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

I dated a woman with celiac sprue (which I guess was extreme.. her mother had to have a bowel resection due to celiac related issues) and she had sudden anaphylaxis at a restaurant that required the use of an epi-pen and an ambulance.

The reaction was caused by the micro-brewery that had opened next door and all the wheat dust in the ventilation system.

[tayo42]

When I've seen this done, yeah you block a fixed time for a "meeting", durring lunch time.

[titanomachy]

It sounds like you could get very high ROI from chilling out a little bit. If one social lunch per month is an unfathomable hardship then you're probably leaving a lot of other opportunities on the table. Do you have OCD or social anxiety or something?

[obezyian]

Apparently, people with celiac disease do have "anxiety or something":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease#Dietary_challe...