Kernel Meetups as a way of welcoming newer kernel developers

It's a good thing to do from a public service perspective, and if there are maintainers that are willing to do that, I think that would be great. Maintainers are super busy people who have a lot of things that we ask them to do, so I'm not sure it would be productive to make participating in local meetups a mandate. But I certainly think it would be great if we could encourage the organization of some local "kernel development meetups" or something like that, and hopefully getting more senior developers involved.

Maybe we could leverage the LUG's in various regions, but I have heard some rumors that some of the LUG's have a reputation of having a fairly toxic environment of their own, and even if they didn't, many of the LUG's appear to have a focus which is more focused on users and sysadmins, as opposed to kernel development. Of course, there are some very strong LUG's, such as the ones which organize the SouthEaster Linux Fest (SELF) and the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE). So there certainly are plenty of possibilities....