I decided to look at the possibility of eventually exporting the configuration data contained in TweetDeck:

You can find the groups, friends, and columns settings in a SQLite database file in a path like:
C:Documents and Settings{USERNAME}Application DataTweetDeckFast.{some hideously long hex string}Local Storetd_{version?}_{twitter username}.db

I used SQLite database browser to look at this file. (I copied it first, of course.) The data storage is pretty simple.

CREATE TABLE columns (cID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, cName TEXT, cOrder INTEGER, cType INTEGER, cTerm TEXT);
CREATE TABLE friends (fUserID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, fName TEXT, fScreenName TEXT, fScreenNameHTML TEXT, fLocation TEXT, fDescription TEXT, fProfileImageURL TEXT, fUrl TEXT, fProtected TEXT, fFollowers INTEGER);
CREATE TABLE groups (gID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, gCID INTEGER, gUserID INTEGER);
CREATE TABLE queue (qID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, qText TEXT);
CREATE TABLE sinceID (sID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, sService TEXT, sType TEXT, sTerm TEXT, sTID INTEGER);

The columns table actually defines the groups, group names, and group displays.

The groups table provides the linkage between the columns and friends tables.

There is a preferences_{username}.xml in this same directory as well, for colors, positioning, etc…