I showed this article to a friend of mine who frequently organizes and participates in CS events. He made a few good points, but here's the main one: Local gr

I showed this article to a friend of mine who frequently organizes and participates in CS events. He made a few good points, but here's the main one: Local groups tend to be extremely personality driven, with a small number of people driving them. When these people move to a new location or their priorities change, the local groups that they led often die. This sounds like what happened in San Diego for the author. There are many other extremely vibrant communities out there, as noted by the comments of others. Also, if you look at the statistics for users on CS, it's 47% female to 53% male.