Lots of discussion going on at the Dem Meetup Hosts yahoo group right now. Plug into that and you'll get a good dose of how we might be able to reach past meetup.com. The most hopeful email I've gotten today was from Ralph Miller:

To: DemMeetupHosts@yahoogroups.com
From: "Ralph Miller"
Subject: [DemMeetupHosts] DNC and MeetUps
I understand that there are plans at the DNC to relaunch their website in June. The revamped site will likely include tools that will enable us to schedule our Meetups directly.
-r

Another good suggestion came from Jon Garfunkel who suggested CivicSpace as a replacement for the tools curretnly offered by meetup.com. Are there any other existing tools that we can latch onto?

Good all around guy Kari Chisolm, and fellow Western Dem, followed up on my Kos postings at his politics and technology website. I'm pretty dumb for not enlisting Kari's insight in this discussion earlier.