Whether you are nwe to the area or just looking to find some new developers to get in touch wtih, I’d start with some of these resources. This is a short list, and not meant to be exhaustive or exclusive by any means.
If you are into web development and work near Philly, then the Philly JavaScript meetup is great. Sometimes the format includes two 30 minute talks, other times it is broken into several lightning talks.
Perhaps the biggest .NET meetup on the east coast can be found at the Microsoft Malvern office, courtesy of the Philly.NET community. This group meets twice each month. On the first meeting, it is an overview of a particular topic for two hours, and the next meeting will be a hands-on lab. Free food is provided, too.
Also, there is a Philly dev slack chat and it’s very active. It’s a great way to interact with other developers and get a pulse for what’s happening in the. I realy need to spend more time in here as well.
I read Technical.ly Philly every day too, to find out what’s happening in the area. It’s a smaller site, but the network of Technical.ly sites is a great resource for finding hyper local news in major east coast cities (Baltimore, New York, etc). You’ll also find some developers from the slack chat mentioned above in there from time-to-time as well.
Game development in Philadelphia is driven by the vibrant community at the Philly Game Forge in Old City. This group meets every Thursday and even has a monthly hacakthon. For folks working ou in the suburbs, the Philly Game Works meetup is hosted at the Microsoft office, and is generally on Thursday evenings, but about to make the switch to Tuesdays.
Additionally, Nextplex Philly is nice for finding where meetups are occuring in the city for the week. You can also post your own.
And finally, the Philly New Tech meetup is by far the biggest tech gathering in the city. When I visited a few months ago, there were at least 200 people there. Food and drinks were provided, too.
-----------------------@DaveVoyles
