The meeting was special for two reasons: it featured the revival of another group of Web designers, the Markup & Style Society, founded by Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte (members of the M&SS were on hand), and CSS wiz Eric Meyer, who had blown into town to meet with some East Coast Clients, was on hand.

How did I find out about this? Twitter, baby (if you’re not following people in your sphere on Twitter, you are missing out).

I got to reconnect w/Josh Porter of Bokardo, whom I’d met at SXSW and who works out of the North Shore area.

My real reason for going was not so that I could write up a nifty blog post and drop names (really). It was because I think Portland needs a group like this. Sure, there are Tweetups and Maine UX is a great group for all things relating to usability, but I think there’s still room for a group devoted to discussing the latest trends in Web design – and imbibing good ale.

I talked to several of the founders of these groups on their experiences and fortunately starting an interest group is not rocket science, it just takes “interest”. Free beer doesn’t hurt, either (libations were on the house last night).

Patrick Haney (Refresh Boston) – “The people were out there. They just needed a place to come together. We created that. We joined about 30 other Refresh groups located in cities across the country.”

Dan Cederholm (Markup & Style Society) – “You just get together with people who share a common interest, do it regularly, and eventually others find out about it and it grows.”

Folks said the interest groups usually start out their meetings with a 15-30 minute presentation, often by one of the members, about a hot topic. Then, social networking in meat-space takes place. Only rarely does a saloon-style brawl break out.

The organizers I spoke with said one of their biggest problems nowadays is finding a place to meet that will hold all the people who attend. I naively expected last night’s meetup to be a fairly intimate gathering of 30-40; yeah, no, it was more like 120 people.

Boy, wouldn’t that be nice here? I’d settle for a group of 5 or 6.

What do you think, Portland? Can we do it? Do I hear “Ayuh”?