Meetup is a free service that organizes local gatherings about anything, anywhere.
This is a good site if you want to meet up with people in your area who share an interest in anything: politics, pets, music, etc. and they are open to suggestions for new topics. There are a number of subjects in the Internet & Technology section that might be of interest to readers of this site.
For example:
* Agile methods http://agile.meetup.com/ * Scheme/Lisp programming http://scheme.meetup.com/ * Smalltalk programming http://smalltalk.meetup.com/ * Java programming http://java.meetup.com/etc.