Jeremy Hogan said on open-source-now-list@redhat.com:

Many of you have probably already heard of Meetup.com due to its
prominence in the Democratic primaries. In order to help LUGs, school
groups, and advocates to better and more easily co-ordinate gatherings
we’ve started redhat.meetup.com.

You’ll see us adding functionality over the coming weeks, and we’ll be
co-ordinating a special global meetup on April 1, 2004, so I urge you to
go ahead and sign up now. If you haven’t used it, it’s a great way to
spin up activity, to meet others interested in Red Hat, Linux, F/OSS
face to face in a casual setting.

http://www.meetup.com might be a nice way to organize local meetings.

E-Mail from Jeremy Hogan