Hey guys, thanks for the great suggestions, this is definitely the kind of stuff I'm looking for. I checked out most of the links so far and BarCamp (definitely plan to attend), Betahouse, and Open Coffee look cool, I'll have to try those out. Any good presentations/events are also of interest, I'll keep on top of those and check as many as I can.

Also, as many pointed out, my e-mail was indeed not visible in my profile (it was in the e-mail field instead). It's now in the profile.

I'd also second the idea of the "hacker network" within/in place of the profile section. Fields for geography, interests, programming experience/language preferences would be great, though I'd still like to see it left to each person to provide as much/little of that info as they'd like. Also, in the geography area, people could post links to fun/interesting events so others in that area would have a quick way of finding out about them while reading HN.