If you don't mind, could you share a bit about those meetups with unstructured conversation? I would like to attend something like that, some keywords to look for would be helpful.
Anyhow, the specific group I was referring to was LessWrong meetups in 3 different cities over a period of about a decade. As I said, I'm not quite aligned with their philosophy, but I did find a bunch of interesting people at those meetups.