Had a very good Ken Wilber MeetUp yesterday.  (Funny enough,  the topic ended up being "self-development" in various areas, with only a loose association to Ken Wilber).

What was fascinating was the  type of open-source  bull session that we had.  We took 6 different areas of life, and discussed people's experiences of skill, competency, experience, in those areas.

Simply by doing this, every person (we had about 11) was "litup" by at least one area of life, shared a great book/story, and was able to engage meaningfully with the rest of the group.  This encouragement of pooled knowledge, was a lot of fun. (As were some of the wry, and wise, stories.)

By the end, everyone was fairly loose, engaged, and contributing - which is all one can really ask, I think.