People go on vacation or just drift away. But others mark the date on their calendar. It becomes important. A chance to talk about the elephant. Nobody knows anything, but everybody knows everything.
Someone gets a gold star for perfect attendance.
You become a body, bound by shared common experience in the past. Self-consciousness is history, brushed aside by history, buried by the avalanche of ideas. Some astounding, some banal. Oh god, we're networking. No we're not.