I'm currently working as a programmer in London, and I'd love to know how do you go about finding them, and what I could do to be easily found. I realise it's a little off topic but I'd appreciate any response you may have.
The earlier one depends on who you're aiming at, but go follow the people you want to work with, engage in them and if they ponder ideas try fleshing them out or producing prototypes and blogging about it... it will get their attention.
The latter one is a question of where we're likely to look. My preferred option at the moment is IRC dev channels for the specific skill I'm looking for, or a search of github for projects that are somewhat related and then approaching those people. If you do the github route then make sure there's a way that people can get in touch... leave a readme markdown with email address, and ideally a link to a fuller profile page (just not one that requires a login... don't link to facebook).
Also on the "we'll find you" route would be open source projects related to the area in which you want to work. Go fix bugs, lots of them... get yourself known amongst those teams. Want to work in a devops shop? Then fix Puppet and Cobbler bugs and make well-made Puppet scripts. Want to work in a rails team? Then go find some large open source rails project or rails itself and get known there.
This all falls into networking of course, but this isn't meet for a beer networking, it's doing stuff that we're mutually interested in... constructing the opportunities to cross paths. It works.
Thanks again.
Alan
Recruitment based upon github activity seems to be popular among startups as well.
I'm currently working on a UK based startup that should hopefully make direct company-to-developer hiring easier for both parties (in the US you have StackOverflow's Careers site, but there's nothing really comparable for Europe).