The Homebrew Computer Club met in a Menlo Park garage starting in March 1975. Members brought hardware, schematics and questions. Steve Wozniak credits it directly with the design of the Apple I.
The format mattered more than the technology
The lesson is not 'computers were exciting in 1975.' The lesson is the format, small, local, recurring, technically serious, socially generous, organized around show-and-tell rather than top-down instruction.
Applied to AI creators today
AI tools in 2026 are in roughly the same place personal computers were in 1975: powerful, weird and badly served by online discourse. A local AI artists guild is the same format, applied to a new medium.