Three follow-thru points on "maker space(s) with space devoted to groups".
- Another ongoing aspect of Noisebridge is that they are actively seeking monetary donations as they "plan to leave [their] current location by the end of August 2019", so IMO I think this indicates that many of Noisebridge's more vocal members and regulars are and will be increasingly "nudging along" meetup event attendees (such as for Linux group meetups) for necessary funds.
2. Sudo Room
https://sudoroom.org/ is part of the Omni Commons and is in the Temescal District of North Oakland. As Michael P already pointed out, this is further away from BerkeleyLUG, although little is preventing persons from Oakland starting their own OaklandLUG there.
- While the Sudo Room hackerspace is similar in many respects to Noisebridge, Sudo Room seems a bit more informal and less structured than its SF counterpart.
- Unless someone is visiting Sudo Room on a weekly and/or other longterm basis, there is much less of a push for visitors to actually join-up Sudo Room as members (it does have a membership webpage at
https://sudoroom.org/membership/ ); one-off event attendees and drop-in visitors have in the past also donated food items to Sudo Room in addition to or in lieu of paying smaller amounts of cash per visit.
- I suspect that if a group (such as OaklandLUG if it were ever created) did plan to hold more formal bimonthly meetups at Sudo Room, then there would eventually be much more of a "nudging along" for such a group's regular visitors to provide monetary donations directed towards the space.
3. There is also Ace Monster Toys
https://www.acemonstertoys.org/ over on the Oakland side of the Berkeley-Oakland city line, which describes itself as a place "where Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville come together and just a short hop from Ashby BART"
- While Ace Monster Toys might very well consider hosting regularly-occuring external meetup groups (such as BerkeleyLUG), AMT would definitely request an outlay of significant fees for *all* LUG meetup participants as part of their membership model (see
https://www.acemonstertoys.org/membership/ )
Could be mistaken on this, but I don't think that the vast majority of BerkeleyLUG attendees would even *consider* shelling out AMT's required $60-$80/month membership dues!
-Aaron