As the organizer for the St. Louis WP Meetup and primary organizer for WordCamp St. Louis 2011, I can tell you that starting a meetup was an absolutely awesome experience. Without it, I wouldn't have met Chip Bennett, who is now helping out as an extremely knowledgeable support guru with UpThemes and I wouldn't have been able to put together the very first WordCamp St. Louis without the volunteers from our Meetup group.

I have since moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and passed the torch to a local marketing/design agency and they've been running the Meetup successfully for months now. I have even gone back and visited the group and am proud to be able to say I was a part of that group.

I am considering starting another WordPress Meetup (even though Dallas has one of the largest Meetup groups ever assembled) for the North DFW area (Frisco, Plano, McKinney) so if anyone is local, give me a holler!