Certainly, if you walk in, sit down and immediately start hitting up your neighbors to see if their companies are hiring, that's going to be a poor experience. This isn't something that you get done in an hour. It's more about building a relationship with the community, and taking part in contributing and sharing knowledge.

But you can ask about what kind of work the folks around you are doing, which may prompt the question "And how about you?", at which point you can mention you're in a job but you're looking for new opportunities .. or that you're available, and looking for Perl development work.

Going to the meetings is only part of it -- you should be on the mailing lists of these two organizations and see if you can contribute occasionally (beyond the obvious, "Me, too!"). Perhaps put a pet project of yours on CPAN (something I'd love to do if I had the spare time), and solicit help on it from the community.