I'm not sure how many times I've mentioned Green Drinks, and I wasn't curious enough to go back and check — I was going to relate my experience at a gathering this week regardless.

I'm a member, and one of several volunteers organizers, of the Boston subset of what is a worldwide "movement," a term that qualifies for quotation marks because in my experience, we're just a bunch of folks who get together over drinks to connect on our shared green interests. Worthwhile, but we're not saving the world except tangentially.

But Green Drinks is huge and growing huger. When I started checking out BGD a couple of years ago, there were maybe 400 groups worldwide. According to its website when I went to check this morning, there are now 542. In Mass., groups have also coalesced in Cambridge/Somerville, Beverly, Gloucester, on the South Shore, on the Cape, and points west. Probably more by now.

I have met people engaged in all sorts of green pursuits, including nonprofit advocacy, government, academia, and business, and plenty of others who want to move in those directions or are just interested. I have also gotten a few story ideas.

This week, I found myself, in one conversation, talking to two entrepreneurs, one who brews organic beer and one who imports organic beef (site was down, but will probably come back). I found it fascinating to hear about their paths and motivations, and I can't imagine how I would have found myself in that conversation otherwise.

Maybe 10 minutes later, I was conversing with two acquaintances I made at least in part through BGD and a new friend I'd made that night. He'd attended on invitation — he's the sustainability chief at a university you have definitely heard of, and we'd asked him to come and tell us about what he's doing. The other two people were a green-roofs advocate and relentless organizer (Boston Greenfest is her current massive endeavor) and high-ranking sustainability officer at a very very large developer and landlord. (I'm being coy about identities because I didn't tell them I'd be writing about our conversation, and they didn't surrender privacy rights when they said hello to me.) We talked about green roofs vs. white roofs (championed by US Energy Secretary Steven Chu); the effects of the stretch building code now available to towns in Mass., and other topics you'd probably be interested in if you're reading this blog (and aren't my mother) (Hi, Mom!).

I also checked in with old-by-now friends — "director of green" at a hotel you've heard of, a biofuels authority who told me about his presentation at a recent green tech conference, an engineer, a software writer, and others.

The gathering Wednesday was less than perfect — we didn't get the space we'd expected, so the speaker was hard to hear. But we did have at least a couple of dozen people, which is typical for us, and there was far more to gain from the experience, in terms of people to meet and ideas to entertain, than I could ever have achieved in the two-three hours we had together. That's why I'll be going again next chance I get.

We meet, generally, on the first Tuesday and the third Wednesday each month, though we're looking at exchanging one of those for a meet-up at a pertinent lecture or other type of gathering. If you want to get on our mailing list, send e-mail to bostongreendrinks (at) gmail. We'd be happy to have you.