Our inaugural meeting was held Oct. 15  from 7:30 to almost 11:00.  We had 10 people attend, there were approximately five individuals who thought they might make it but were unable to for various reasons.  Thankfully several people unexpectedly brought friends and family.  This is an excellent starting point.  Some people even showed up early.

Kevin had asked several questions, about goals, format, etc. so I prepared a rough agenda, on which we covered the several few items. 

We did go around the table and introduced ourselves.  Several people came out of curiosity.  Being concerned about the dynamics of a large group of people who know each other, I have intentionally not been telling many of my friends about the meeting.  Of the people I did not know, almost everyone was either someone from meetup.com or their friends or family.

We discussed skeptics vs. atheists.  There were at least two people who are not atheists, so it was good to discus the difference between skepticism and atheism and that all skeptics are not atheists.  We do not want the discussion to get bogged down on just religion or to make people with a belief God feel excluded.  When the discussion turns to religion all other conversations stop.

We had a long brainstorming session about possible topics, generating way too many topics.  Several people expressed interest in going to a haunted house or ghost hunting, and investigating Saskatchewan folklore.  We also discussed having a film or youtube clips and discussing them.

In the end people felt that we should strive for variety (as the discussion list can attest) and contradictorily focus.  Most importantly people wanted to learn and T-Shirts.

As we adjourned it was decided to keep the momentum and have our next meeting in two weeks (Oct. 29) at Amigo’s

Everyone appeared to have a good time and stayed to the end.

I am a bit concerned that Amigo’s back room is a bit hard to find.  I added detail to the room location on the web site and booked the room under the Saskatoon Skeptics.

Future topics for discussion:

• Lunar Landing Hoax
• Chiropracty
• Homeopathy
• Public funds paying for alternative medicine
• The health care system
• Logical fallacies vs. the scientific methods
• The young offenders act/does our prison system work
• Where do morals come from
• Are Richard Dawkins' Memes real
• Housing crisis
• Saskatchewan folklore
• Synchronicity/deja vue
• Media concentration/fear uncertainty and doubt/bias
• 9/11 truthers and how they have effectively been shut down
• Slacker uprising
• Al Gore/Global warming, will it destroy the earth?
• Evolution Vs Creationists/Intelligent Design
• Fossil Gap
• Sex education in school
• Intelligent Design movement
• Animal rights
• Stem cell research
• HPV vaccine
• Over population
• Definition of evidence
• Are Saskatchewan people sexually repressed
• Abortion/When does a person become a person?
• Cloning
• Genetically modified food
• Is there something with the full moon
• Feminist myths.