[zaphar]

I just chose what I liked and had fun with. Hung out with people working on Blender. Hung out in the perl IRC channel on freenode. Hung out with a group doing an Open Source game called Planeshift which wasn't high profile in any way but it gave me experience. And put me in contact with people who had connections.

[Paul_D_Santana]

Hah I really like the IRC idea (especially since I don't know anyone like you do). Just joined the Ruby channel as a test at: http://irc.lc/freenode/ruby-lang