Hi.
Oops, I hit send too prematurely, sorry for the seeming bluntness (but it is still a blunt message, can't apologize for that I suppose):
No need to apologize. There's a need for informal meetings as much (or even more) as there is for courses and conferences.
Perhaps a monthly informal gathering similarly (self-)organised to Dorkbot but focussed on Haskell (and other functional languages) is what I'm really after, but that still requires some organisation time and a venue, neither of which necessarily come cheap :(
There are several informal meetings on Haskell happening throughout the world. I'm personally not living in the London area, but I regularly attend the Munich Haskell meeting (http://www.haskell-munich.de/). Regarding London, I know there's the Haskell Hoodlums meetup (http://www.meetup.com/hoodlums/), and I think there is or was a Haskell User Group as well, but it's currently listed as "not active" on http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/User_groups. Perhaps there's a chance to bring it back to life? Cheers, Andres -- Andres Löh, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com