well, not loading this on you, but many Bay Area hackerspaces started after people spent time at noisebridge or another related space, and then realised they could work with others to build one somewhere nearer to them physically or ideologically: Ace Monster Toys (now Ace Hackerspace), Queerious Labs, Double Union, Sudo Room, Mothership Hackermoms. It's not hard if you find likeminded people, and the best place to look is just dropping by casually to a hackerspace not-so-near you..
Not a criticism of your response, but you'll notice that every space you mentioned is either in SF or in Oakland. I have been looking for and trying to build community in South Bay for almost a decade now. The conclusion I've come to is that the people who might populate a healthy hacker space don't live here in sufficient numbers, and the people who do live here have very different interests, goals, and community needs.
I've obviously been to Noisebridge. It didn't become a part of my life because it is at least an hour drive away, and often much longer during the times of day when I can reasonably go there.
fair enough: I've lived in the South Bay too, and it's certainly hard to pull such community projects together. I meant to add Biocurious, which is in Santa Clara, but I don't know what it's like these days (I assumed from your description that the space you were initially describing was HackerDojo, but I'm a bit out of the hackerspace drama grapevine these days, so maybe it's Biocurious?)
Are you far from San Jose? I can see a way to get there from there, as it were. Redwood City has some of the right dynamics; I can also imagine something adjacent to the Computer History Museum. Again, not belittling your efforts over a decade (and I realise this sounds a bit like those drive-by health comments that say something like "have you tried taking vitamins?"), but I have some experience in this myself, and you've got me vaguely problem-solving around it now.
I appreciate the response! (As an aside, there's also Maker Nexus in Sunnyvale.) I didn't mean to aggrandize my efforts, which have been largely personal: trying to organize groups and projects on topics that I care about. I have not been running a failing hacker space for a decade!
I've mostly been active around Palo Alto and Mountain View, which is ultimately my biggest mistake. The long and the short of it is, people from the larger companies generally don't seem interested in "extracurricular" activity, and students at local colleges don't stick around in the area. The most enthusiastic hackers here are growth hackers, which I am not and don't care for. I also get a lot of individuals who feel like they're washing out of their profession, but that's not the same mindset as tech enthusiasm.
I agree that fishing in San Jose proper is likely to turn out more students, recent grads, and other kinds of people who are more about exploring and trying things.
