About DEVSA
A Discord Server in 2023.A 501(c)(3) in 2024.
A volunteer-governed nonprofit that keeps San Antonio's tech community groups on one calendar, in one public directory, and in one room a few times a year.
- September 2023
- Started as a Discord server
- March 2024
- Incorporated as a 501(c)(3)
- 23
- Community groups on the calendar
- 15
- Partners backing the work
The city had meetups. Python people and Linux people, designers and security folks and game developers, each running their own nights in their own rooms. What it did not have was anything connecting them — no shared calendar, no way for one group to reach another's people, and nothing that kept a conversation going after everyone went home.
DEVSA started in September 2023 as a Discord server, which is not much of a claim — anyone can make one in under a minute, and most of them are empty by the weekend. It was made by someone who had come up through service work, taught himself to code, and gone looking for the city's builders only to find them scattered across rooms that never met.
The server was never the point. What mattered was that people kept turning up in it, and that it eventually grew enough to put on an event. That event is where it stopped being a chat room and became something community groups and partners wanted to build with.
Six months later it was a nonprofit. Incorporating as a 501(c)(3) in March 2024 is what made the rest of it possible — grants it could actually accept, sponsorship it could hold properly, and a board standing between the organization and any one person.
The groups still run themselves. That was never the part that needed fixing. What DEVSA added was the connective tissue around them, and what that comes to in practice is set out on Building Together.
Also in the record
For a while DEVSA kept a coworking room at Geekdom, open to the community and staffed by volunteers. It closed in September 2026. The page is still up because the people who gave it their time, and Geekdom for giving it the room, are worth keeping on the record.
The coworking spaceMeet the Team
A 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Built for the Active Builders.
DEVSA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit with one constituency: the people actually building here. Partners want to reach them. Community groups want to be found by them. The builders are looking for the groups — and for the learners coming up behind them.
DEVSA is the channel all three meet on, and the board holds that line. The calendar, the public directory and the conferences are judged on one question: do they put those people in the same room?
