Whether you're looking for a cofounder, a friend, or just want to surround yourself with like-minded brilliant people, there is an underutilized goldmine under our noses: Github.

1. Go to Github Search
2. Search Users written in Your Favourite Language for location:san+francisco
3. Find people with some interesting code
4. Message them, meet them for lunch or coffee, hack on a project together, forge a relationship.

Ready? Here's some examples to get you rolling:

• Python coders in Toronto
• C aficionados in New York
• Ruby pirates in Boulder
• Javascript ninjas in Palo Alto
• Haskell wizards in San Francisco

Alright, this doesn't completely replace meetups—after all, Tim Preston-Werner of Github met his talented cofounders at a Ruby meetup in San Francisco. A healthy dose of real-life mingling is good all around, but not everyone is always into beer or hackathons. Go target your peers like you would target a good potential customer.

I'm going to make an effort to meet a person from Github whenever I travel somewhere new. You should too.

P.S. You should follow me on Twitter here, and go read more protips.