Pragmatically speaking, how does one convene a convention about anything, without people first corresponding together to find commonality about proposed subject matter? Especially if great time and distances have to be traversed in order to do this?
On such a basis, I'm fully entitled to call such a thing a "frat party," nothing more.
"Pragmatics" only takes you so far. And then, you have to start looking for the underlying commonality of substance that drove such "pragmatists" together to resolve commonly-perceived problems in the first place.
My sense is Libertarian philosophy does not reach to this level of the problem.
Might you perchance be a Libertarian?
That's why Congress was designated to receive the applications, because given the times it was more practical for legislatures to give the applications to their Senators (remember, pre-17 thamendment) to convey to Congress as the state's intent. That was Congress' role as aggregator, to use your term.
States didn't usually communicate with each other directly, they did so via Congress. They weren't ignorant of the sentiments of other states; they read newspapers and used Congress on their general purpose convention of states for the purpose of Article I legislating within the framework of the Constitution.
Might you perchance be a Libertarian?
Article V was for states to use when they felt that the federal government was somehow deficient in serving their purpose. Today, people forget that the states and the people rule, having delegated limited power to the federal government. You are sounding like the states are there to serve the federal government, and have to unite in some way to convince the feds to let them meet to discuss how to change their own method of governing.
-PJ