Tactical (you can do this in the next 5 minutes): Find a good IRC channel that is active and you can connect with people with similar interests with you. We've seen people as far as Nigeria at #digitalocean
Definitely-- I'm a admin on the DigitalOcean IRC channel and we often have large discussions on development and server configuration on our channel. Please feel free to stop by and join in-- you may be able to find a lot of peers that think the way you do :)