I'm going to (attempt to) create a centralized Ruby / Rails user group website, which will offer free resources to any user group which needs it, and will at least attempt to catalogue all Ruby / Rails user groups in existence, even if they don't actually use the resources of my website.
+1
If anyone has any suggestions, comments, or feels the desire to pitch in, I consistently monitor this group/mailing list/forum and am also welcome to personal emails at technodolt :: at :: gmail :: dot :: com.
Please, please give me some feedback so I can know if I'm wasting my time.
Quite a few Ruby groups are listed on http://ruby.meetup.com/; there is no separate category for Rails, but many of these concentrate on it.
I list several Ruby and Rails groups in
SF Bay Area Scripting Groups http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/bass/groups.php
What would be very cool, IMHO, would be a way for folks to list their locations (e.g., by zip code) and have the result be logged in Google Maps. I'd suggest two separate maps: one for individuals and the other for groups.
FWIW, Jef Poskanzer's GeoRSS service makes this sort of thing quite easy to prototype. I put together a map of Apple Stores in the US:
I've always been a bit amazed that Apple doesn't provide a useful geographic interface to their Apple Store pages. That is, you can see a map of the US stores on
Store List - Apple Store - Apple
but clicking on the image will get you nowhere.
By screen-scraping this page (and some subsidiary pages), I was able to generate one of Jef Poskanzer's GeoRSS maps:
I punted the overseas stores (whose information is actually hidden in the main page) because I had already spent more time on this than I wanted to...
-r