Ask HN: How do I plug myself into the Hacker community?
I'm 25 years old and have been writing software since I was 12. While growing up I never did have any close friends that were as enthusiastic and passionate about programming as I am. All of my friends were into football. So, while we'd sit at our high school lunch tables and talk about football players, I would most likely be day dreaming about what my next weekend programming project would be or why my Diablo hack was causing the game to crash - the real fun stuff.
Anyways, I did Computer Science in College and went to a heavy commuter University in North Dallas. Nobody there seemed to really care about programming, either. I'd ask group members and classmates about any cool things they've programmed and most would look at me like I'm crazy. Some didn't even want to go into a computer science job after college, either!
I'm now at my second programming-related job. I worked at Nortel for a year and then we all know what happened to them. I now work at a 6 person company, as one of two developers on staff. It's nothing new-age, or enjoyable, or fun. In fact, I feel like I'm wasting my time there. I feel like I need to be with other hackers. This is what I've always wanted, really. I just figured it would somehow happen.
So there's my question becoming apparent now after this wall of text - how do I plug myself into the hacker community? I'm in the Dallas, Texas area. I'm sure there's tons of things going on out here, but it sounds like everything is happening in San Francisco. Is it going to require me to just do it, and take a trip out there for some monthly hacker get together? Or what about New York, would it be worth heading out there for a monthly get together, also? I wouldn't know anyone out there so I don't even know if that'd be beneficial to just go do. (I don't see how it could necessarily hurt either) Should I focus on just making some cool projects and beefing up a github repo for myself? Should I blog? I've always been more of a "do"-er when it comes to programming so I never did really focus on a blog for myself. I read HN daily and am jealous when I read posts about groups of people living in a house working on websites, etc. That's my eventual goal I guess and am trying to figure out how to get from here to there.
I'm not claiming to be a guru or anything but I do have this gut feeling that if I could wire myself into a community of like minded people then the future would at least be highly enjoyable and worth whatever I did to get there.
Thanks for any advice!