I'm only here for another day, but is anyone else in Nashua, New Hampshire?

Yeah, I've thought about that. Maybe we could share our cities and states, so we know which CBers are in which areas, then devise some sort of subtle item to show we are, without seeming odd. I really want to meet others, but it's always seemed like an unavoidable trap that I can't.

Elli says joea 

Who's Joe? 

One thing about meeting irl that I'm sure the admin should will agree with is to be sure that your parents are on board. Talking to people online is one thing, but meeting them face to face while having minimal information about them is entirely different. It's good to have your parents on board ig you decide to meet an internet friend irl just in case. Besides, your parents would appreciate being in the loop.

Chatterbox has already set the rule that it will not facilitate users meeting each other in real life. But yes, for other meetings, we would support involving parents.

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Yeah! i'd rather not say what city i live in, but i will say that i live in the Wilamette Valley, in Oregon. As for subtle items, what about home painted tee-shirts saying something like PIE WAR! or Ugh, AEs, or custom shoelaces or something? 

Yeah, like that. Like a bracelet or a t-shirt that hints it. It doesn't have to be an organized meeting (which would be hard to do), but if, say, we see someone with such a thing in like a grocery store, we could wave or something. Idk. You'd probably be with your parents then, but if you aren't wearing such an indication, they might think a total stranger is waving to them on a dare or something. Like I said, the concept seems like an unavoidable trap without a loophole, and it makes me sad to think I'll probably never see any of you irl.

Or tees with our CBer names on them...

My ideal scenario for meeting you all follows the lines of a street fair or a camp, or a really large party. There would be a big public space, somewhere that's nice to look at and provides a lot of things to do. We could cosplay as ourselves the way we appear on the CB, one of our AEs or other CBers, or just come as we usually are. We would probably get name tags. I would want to draw you all, so I would set up a picturing booth, maybe with photos as an additional option. I would also want to do face painting, though, and cooking or something... That could easily be solved by multiple days. Camp cabins would most likely work for that; I've never been in one, but it sounds fun. We could also theoretically just bring tents. There would be a lot of food, and music, and some quiet places with books and stuff. We could all come and eat, dance, DJ, read, talk, run around, make things, whatever we wanted. There would be a few group activities, a little get-to-know-you stuff, ways to make sure everyone meets everyone and finds out more about them. There would be adults around, of course; most if not all of us would have our parents in attendance, and event helpers would probably be around to run stuff, plus there would be plenty of random pedestrians if we go somewhere public. We would get there, exchange hugs and greetings, start doing stuff, and hopefully have fun.

One of the biggest problems is where to do it; we live all over, and a lot of us would have to take a plane or drive really far to get wherever the meeting would be. We can all get on the Internet, but that doesn't require physically moving very much. We could do multiple locations, but then we wouldn't get to meet everyone. We'd also need to find a big enough space; CB census threads are usually pages and pages long, covering dozens of CBers. There could be as many as fifty of us. I don't know. I didn't check.

Another big problem is when. We would have to plan really far in advance to make sure everyone could get there, and even then there's no telling the future. Things could happen that pull us away, people might change their minds or not be able to do it in the first place. Organizing as many people as we have is a challenge. We live in different time zones, have different schedules, do different things at different times of day. It might be hard to synchronize.

It would be really cool to meet you guys in-person. Wearing a badge to identify yourself might work if another CBer lives in your town and you go out a lot, but I think most of us had "everyone all at once" in mind. I'd love to do this, but it would definitely take some work, and we can't really talk about it here.

In reality, it probably won't happen, but it's fun to dream!

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