It's a vestage of members (no longer participating here)who created more noise than signal (in my opinion).
It actually isn't (imo) a vestige of those people. The gatherings began when I organized and hosted the first one. Making it happen was a bit like herding cats (or pushing rope) and those two didn't help that much with the meeting prep. On the other hand, they did make some presentations which is an important aspect of the gatherings. My point being that the group shouldn't live or die based on the participation of one or two people.
At PCGG-I we talked about using the group to reach out to schools and the like to help build general interest in holography back up among a newer generation. Several of us have done that individually but having an official organization would help get us into more places.
This is just one of the things we'd envisioned doing with the PCG but as long as it's ad-hoc they're difficult to accomplish.
Unfortunately the behavior of forum-vandalizer and his gnome had the effect that several attendees lost the desire to participate further. I'd like to get it going again though.