If I were you, I'd hold off and see what your college offers...

Some Universities/Colleges have some really great and active LUG's (Linux User Groups). Or a lot of times you can join professional associations like AITP for next to nothing. In most cases, you don't even have to join to attend the meetings and discussions. You won't get access to some of the resources that members have, but you will get to network. While these are not always security related, they are pretty close to what you are talking about.

If your school doesn't have anything like this, by all means, start one up....

Stupid question, did you hit up this page for your local area codes?

http://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-groups/dc-groups-index.html

finding dc734, which rebranded as arbsec opened a lot of doors in the area. Things I never knew about.

Through them, I've met a couple of hack spaces, learned about a2geek, interviewed (but didn't get hired) at a local security company, found out about the local Virtual Machine User group.


Try looking around on meetup.com too.

2600 is near my college so i will look into that. Not sure if ISSA is still active (http://www.ci-issa.org/) and same with OWASP (http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Indianapolis#tab=Local_News)

@chrisj no defcon group around my area

I guess I'll wait till college starts (btw planning to do http://cit.iupui.edu/cit/network_cert.shtml?menu=cert )