Interesting that you posted this as one of my clients is trying to start a community of IT providers focused on local government and they asked me if I thought if it would be a good idea to start a linkedin group in conjunction with an in-person networking group. I suggest Meet-Up and the more I think about it the more I think that it is a natural synergy. One would feed into the other and the online relationships would be bolstered by the face-to-face meetings and vice versa.

True even though I have noticed that the majority of responses and threads started on LinkedIn groups were created by consultants and solo practitioners.