Community Center 2.0

Photo from the SJ Mercury News.

To these eyes the more interesting story in this morning's Merc was right below the banner head re Google's earnings. In August the Hacker Dojo was created in an old building formerly tenanted by a glass company.  The gathering place is

a "community center" for code monkeys, startup dreamers and anybody else with an unquenchable thirst to take technology in new directions.

A typical evening at the Dojo in Mountain View sometimes looks like chaos — two friends cobbling together a robot out of chips, circuit boards and servo motors; a clump of technical writers packed like sweaty sardines into a meeting; people squinting silently into their laptops, oblivious to the coming night.

With our virtual networks growing exponentially faster than the real, a place where we can make a physical connection becomes paradoxically more important. Online dating only takes us so far. We need to meet, work with, and/or make love to the live person to seal the deal. 

The founders and sponsors of the Hacker Dojo are showing that the spirit of the Valley is stronger than ever. They subscribe to the the belief that if you build it people will come....and create.