It's never to late to meet new people.  There are many advantages found in making and keeping connections with others.  Finding common interests, mentoring, idea swapping, etc.  The IEEE provides a great opportunity to network with others through society meetings, online groups, etc.

From a career perspective, networking represents your safety net.  People that you have positively impacted are more willing and able to provide moral support and leads when looking for a new job.

I'm not advocating that you build a network for the sole purpose of finding a job.  I'm advocating that as individuals, we should find others that share common interests and hobbies.  Those groups can find many advantages to existing other than job security.  It's easy to develop a network that generally consists of people that you work with directly.  This is good, but you should try and branch out to others that have different experiences and exposures.  Diversify your network of friends.

Finding people with common interests and different backgrounds is getting easier.  The IEEE has a rich list of events in this area.  The current list of events can be found in either the Scanner newsletter or the electronic escanner.  Social networking sites such as linkedin, facebook and orkut are full of people that have very diverse backgrounds and interests.  Each of these include a sub-group devoted to IEEE members.