I was preparing for the Lone Star College IT Advisory Board Meeting tonight, and one of my agenda items is to discuss local user groups and how to encourage student participation. I contacted Zain and Jared from Microsoft, and they referred me to this amazing website that shows many of the UGs and SIGs in the area.

One catch was that it doesn’t really do “Surrounding Areas” well. So if you put in “Houston” as your search radius, you don’t get the North Houston .Net User Group. Same with Conroe or Spring. You actually have to type “The Woodlands”. This is a little disappointing. Oh well.

Here is a short list of some of the more interesting sounding groups currently on the list:

• North Houston .Net User Group
• Access Developers Workshop
• F# Community
• Houston Cloud-n-Cluster User Group
• Houston D2SIG
• Houston Gaming and Media User Group

In addition, check out the following  Virtual Groups

• Virtual Brown Bag
• Reaction Grid
• Second Life
• Linked In .Net User Group

There is also an Alt.Net Houston Google Newsgroup available, for people interested in fusing Microsoft technology with Ruby and other sundry items.