I went last night to this group called NYC Resistor, http://www.nycresistor.com/. They're more tinkerers and hardware-project people, and they call themselves a hackerspace; However, the environment seemed open and I went there last night and spent about two hours working on some automated trading code. They have this setup where people can go in and teach classes or have study-nights for various topics. I haven't asked them about anything yet, but I was thinking perhaps an automated trading group or class to discuss papers, math, programming, or even software related to trading would make for an interesting group. Anyone interested, if I start something up? Really, even if 2-3 people showed up, it'd be worth it. Of course, if they reject my idea, we could still meet at a diner every so often and continue with the scheme. Anybody interested? Send me a PM.
I should mention that I don't expect pros to show up. NYC Resistor, for example, has people coming in and building basic, easy projects. They're not designing sophisticated electronics, beyond your usual microcontroller interfacing or stepper motor work. I imagine most of the people who'd bother to show up to this group I'm envisioning would just be retail traders trying to bust free from working for the man. Yeah, I work at a hedge fund and I won't talk about what I do at work, but what I'd do at this group is try ideas that I wouldn't have time for at work, or wouldn't get the approval for at work on account of time or objectives we're trying to hit. The second thing is that I want to keep my math skills sharp, meaning I have no problem teaching people statistical methods and reviewing it weekly. So even if that is all I accomplish, it's worth my while. At work, sometimes a project can be code heavy and I won't see any math at all for days. I usually keep reading papers, but it only stays in my head for the time around which I read the paper. Thus, presenting papers or discussing other papers would be worth it. Third, I'd like to focus on R and Matlab, or have tutorials on these packages. Fourth, I mentioned on this site that I think some of the OHLC/boring type stuff should be open source. This group is the kind of place where stuff like that would be discussed.
If you have a good idea that can make you money shut up, work quietly on your own and forget about meeting with others. Most of them will end up growing potates in Oregon after they got fired from Wall Street.
... except all the best ideas I've ever gotten were from random musings at people interviewing me at jobs when I pressed them for information. Also, though, my overall process for analyzing things has improved tremendously on account of people suggesting various tools and packages to solve specific problems.