In late 2011, I co-founded the group that was to become known as UX Speakeasy. An old co-worker and good friend of mine Ben King was tired with all of the great UX people leaving San Diego for the Bay Area. We had no sense of community and the existing local groups like SandCHI and IxDA SD were at record low numbers for turnout, or completely dormant.
As of September 2013, roughly 1.5 years later, we have consistent monthly meetups of 90+ UXers with waitlists (up to 40 people) every time. We have put on 3 mini-conferences (all day Saturday) around Advanced UX, Sketching, and Mobile Design.
I have personally spoken at several monthly meetings, was on a panel about how Intuit does UX, and had Intuit Studio host 2 meetups in our space. This played no small part in Intuit SD earning a reputation of the place to be for designers and researchers.