As a London based hacker this chimes with me. There are groups such as the BCS that are supposedly there to nurture IT networking, but their events schedule looks a bit dry.

I've found some of the entrepreneurial networking events (OpenCoffee and Geektails) to be interesting, but you don't get much of a chance to talk about the technical challenges at those.

I'm looking forward to coming along on the 4th anyway. But update the "news" section on the Facebook group with the details please!