My local EA group has an unfriendly and impersonal vibe (via r/EffectiveAltruism)

It's of course hard to say much without further information, e.g. demographics, cause areas, type of events. However, I think there is a big risk of friend groups being identical to the EA local group, especially in emerging locations. This can be very alienating to new people and I think might in some cases really be net-negative because first contact with EA is super important.
Some steps to prevent this:

- If your group = you and some close friends: consider not calling yourself an EA group but presenting yourself as "just some friends all interested in EA", look for other EA-interested people you know less and start a group together with them. Be aware of founder effects. (If you start out as only computer scientists, it's likely computer scientists will be most attracted to your group.)
- Try to actively increase diversity in the group by e.g. supporting people with no friends in the group or doing outreach outside of your normal social network
- If your group only consists of men: Keep in mind that it can be very difficult for women to fit into such a group. Pay attention to how much the conversation is dominated by men. 
- Get (anonymous) feedback from irregular attendees. Ask them if they felt welcomed and what you could improve. Ask them if they would like to run a meetup and organize it their way.
- Don't see official EA meetups as hangouts with friends. Focus on EA topics and prevent conversations about personal stuff.

This sucks. I think this sort of experience might be way too common and I haven't been able to stop thinking about this kind of thing the last little while. 

I'm shamelessly linking to some thoughts I have recently posted that is related to questions like "how can we be more welcoming" (in fact, conversations around this are the whole reason I wrote the post).

You might also be interested in the discussion that inspired the post on welcomingness at "shop-fronts" like community groups. It's linked at the top of the post I linked above but for good measure, I'll also link the top level post here (I strongly recommend reading both the post and the comments that push back on it).