Where are the best places to meet other programmers? (Minnesota)

This question is probably crap but I find myself scratching my head.

I'd love to meet other programmers to bounce ideas off of and maybe somewhere down to line work on a startup. (currently, my best friend is stackoverflow... lol)

I am 29 and out of school so I don't have the luxury of hanging out in the computer science building on a college campus. I'd probably get tasered if start lurking around there now. haha.

I've tried craigslist but that seems to yield mostly unfavorable results... (i.e. old people who have been coding for 30 years and think .NET is the only way to do things, or programmers from India who can do just about anything... for $7 an hour)

I've tried to network through my existing list of contacts to see if they know someone who may know someone but it seems everyone in my 6 degrees is a muggle.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that I live in Minnesota where people tend to shut themselves in their homes for 8 months out of the year. This limits the chances of running into another programmer at a coffee house or whatnot.

So, I am hoping you guys(and girls) can point me in the right direction.

I appreciate it.

I'm in MN as well (Minneapolis). Hopefully you're already hooked up, but in case you're not here are a few that I've been a part of:

• Tech.mn - great calendar of events going on in all sorts of areas
• Bootstrapper's breakfast (check meetup.com)
• Minnestar / MinneDemo / MinneBar - Great events to meet other folks

Good luck!

I met quite a few programmers at my local linux user group. We don't have them here but in many areas there are python user groups and ruby user groups

Join as many meetups as you can across the country, regardless of location.

You'll find the mailing lists and irc channels are great and the other reason is that virtual technology is bringing the meetings "to the masses" via skype, google hangouts, demo's and the like. The technology is not quite the same as being in the same room, but it's a great way to make online connections.

Stack Overflow and its franchise sites are also great place to hang out. There you can start a discussion on your idea and you can also watch what problems other people are trying to sort out.

You could always try Meetup. I've done some PHP meetup's and there's definitely people there who know 'your language'.