I guess my skepticism arises in part from the guy who was sitting next to me at the meetup (a member of the press committee, and definitely gave me the "yeah, right" vibe), and in part just from some hints here and there on IRC about whether the board will support any US chapters at all. Chapcomm has indeed been helpful, it's just a question of whether they have enough pull.
Like I said, the legal stuff shouldn't be a big issue, once we know where we stand. Fundraising shouldn't be much of a problem either (barnstar cookies, anyone?)... we're talking about a few hundred bucks, not a few thousand.
I'm not sure about Andrew's idea for using ideas as a membership requirement. It has a certain elegance, but some sort of follow-up on ideas would impress me more :).
I don't know that we need to incorporate before announcing on mailinglists, but we certainly should if we're going to announce on newspapers (in fact, it would be nicer to have tax-exemption status before we start raising money for official press releases). I'll be happy to help write a mailinglist announcement later today (when it gets too hot to do real work).
-johnny.
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