"I suggest start with a poll for us here in the Eastern or even South Eastern Region to determine the number of people who would attend, choice of location/city and date."

I think the low-hanging fruit would be to first get the poll going, and target interested people who live in reasonable driving distance of each other. This could be done via the poll and , for people concerned about privacy - they could list the nearest multi-national food chain location - say a Starbucks or McDonalds', as their preferred meeting location (for planning purposes). This might also be done automatically if everyone posted this location into their profile - hek PG could then put everybody's name and location on a Google map.

The next reasonably priced alternative was Pat's suggestion on the live webconferencing; I was interested in locating people to Skype with some time ago, but never pursued it. This idea is quite similar, and I think a very good one. In fact, there would need to be a few 'conventions' around such meetings so they remain somewhat orderly (e.g. number of users, turn taking, topics of interest). I think the best presentations are those that can demonstrate how they use the products in real time for different purposes - sought of like a 'show and tell' - which is more inspiring live than in a pre-recorded video. With this approach, while the geographic location isn't so important, meeting time is the big barrier - and this could also be posted in someone's profile and aggregated to a centralized list as a starting point for a meeting coordinator.

That said...I realize there are people who live in geographically distant locations that have cultivated deep relationships over many years on this forum, that would like to meet in person. This would obviously involve some travel.

...just some more ideas. And count me in if there's no plane travel or no driving greater than 1 hour from NYC : )