There are so many profitable ideas here on et already, that we have no time to waste going to meetups.
sounds like we easily forget discipline and patience are still the key ingredients of success, so even with a good strategy / setup shared, the majority will still make it break apart when applying it.
Roger Federer makes $47mil a year playing tennis. I'm sure he'd have no problem explaining the rules of tennis and how he plays, what coaches he uses what sports psychologist he uses. He'd tell you his edge no problem but I somehow doubt he will get joined in the top rankings by the people he's told. Unless you have some exclusive arb you think no one else knows about giving out your edge is rarely a threat. I've told loads of trainee traders exactly what I do but very few actually become "professional tennis players" At the end of the day if you can't manage yourself you can't manage your trading and that applies to automated system building and management too.
Trading edges come from years of experience and/or market research. You are unlikely to give that away for nothing. As a trader you might want to share with other traders if you think you going to get the same quality research in return, but with all the garbage out there you more likely to get worthless crap. A few traders (mostly ex traders) do give away good stuff in books, these guys tend to making millions on the seminar/snakeoil circuit, but again it is hard to differentiate the majority of crap/scam vendors from the tiny minority of good ones.
This is a bit off the subject but it is about sharing. I once shared on a busy board a chart loaded with a particular set of indicators (used unconventionally) that allows one to easily grasp the dynamics of what's traded. It was essentially a trading system. The result was very interesting. Some of the better traders immediately recognized it's value and quickly volunteered comments like: niiice, wow, interesting, but other responds revealed that most commenters did not have a clue about what was important in that setup. From this I surmised that revealing useful information can be valuable at times because it may help one ID some of the more knowledgeable in the group. I never been to a meeting but sat around and spent time with independent floortraders when I was one and it was always interesting to find out how others think. So, I think going to a meeting and flashing some of one's card's can be good. bc I wholeheartedly agree with the comments made by all three people posting before me.