A long time ago I was a part of a Linux User Group in the area. I’ve also been a part of an Ubuntu LoCo as well. I’d like to see if there might be anyone interested in doing a local meet up for Smart Homes. Not just for Home-Assistant, but all inclusive of making our spaces work with us.
Looking for interested parties right now more than anything else.
On a side note, if anyone in the greater Kansas City area is looking for help with a project. Drop me a note, I might be able to help.
Man, I’d love to get some kind of local meetup going.
According to the analytics, there are just over 56k people in the US with HA deployed - out of over 330M people that live here.
Actually, the better way of looking at it is by land area: The USA is 3.797M sq miles. With an installed base of 56k, that means one installation every ~67 square miles.
Granted, Not everyone turns on analytics, but still… On average, the next person near you isn’t exactly all that near, unfortunately.
Yes, there are pockets of installed devices, but - at least in my case - there was one guy got it, a friend saw it and thought it was cool, and so on. Meaning, chances are that if you personally know even 1 or 2 people near you that have it, you probably already know everyone in your area.
Just a sad reality. 
When you break it apart like that, yeah… it’s going to be few and far between. But then you have population density where an entire county might have 115 people due to how sparse it is. In the denser populations, there are much higher chances simply due to the numbers. Where I live the population isn’t exactly small with a number like 1.7M. I know a total of seven personally, and about 12 others on the far skirts outside of suburbia (> 1.5h drive). But you start including mainstream smart home components, there’s a chance if you throw a rock you’ll hit someone. I mean, how many people do you know that don’t have some kind of smart speaker or other type of smart device hub? I don’t want to limit the meet up to just home-assistant… I’d like all walks represented if possible.