This page preserves the founding history of 10BitWorks. The core source is an unsigned first-person founding narrative by the founder, archived verbatim as History of 10BitWorks (PDF), with documentary context from the Point Paper, January 2021 and the records on Organization & Legal Identity. The name change from “Hackerspace” to “Makerspace” and the visual identity story live on Organization & Legal Identity and Logo & Identity History.
The narrative opens with a question from a friend and former college roommate while both worked at a tech company: “Hey you want to start a hackerspace?” A search on hackerspaces.org settled it. As the idea grew, word arrived that Austin was starting one; the founder visited ATX Hackerspace mid-build-out, met its funders and landlord, and came back energized.
Organizing ran through meetups and a mailing list called sa-hackerspace, described in the narrative as “a grand bike-shedding experiment” about how and what the space should be. A second organizer who had already filed a DBA as San Antonio Hackerspace joined forces, and the effort plugged into the local tech scene: Rackspace folks, XCSSA, SATLUG, and SA-Digital Fabricators.
On Thursday, June 10, 2010, the “San Antonio Hackerspace Kickstart” meeting at the San Antonio Technology Center drew a large crowd. The two organizers laid out the case for a space; interest was real, but expectations of a ready-made space ran high. Shortly after, the San Antonio Hackerspace partner withdrew — faced with a hundred-person event, financial baggage, and a partnership weeks old, he kept the “San Antonio Hackerspace” name. That forced a rename: the mailing list suggested candidates, 10BitWorks won, and the DBA was filed the next day.
The name is a binary joke: in binary, 10 is the number 2 — a nod to a “two-bit” operation run on shoestring money. (See the name history note on why the legal entity still carries “Hackerspace”.)
Tweeks (Thomas Weeks, an XCSSA member and Rackspace employee) had been looking for a hackerspace to join and backed the young group. He introduced the founder to Dirk Elmendorf, one of the early Rackspace founders; in a spur-of-the-moment meeting, Elmendorf and his brother agreed to front a significant chunk of the first year’s rent.
The space that followed met the checklist: central San Antonio, cheap rent, an understanding landlord, room to grow. It was an old motorcycle repair shop on Roosevelt, repainted “a blinding silver,” next to a cheap motel and a Whataburger, two blocks off the San Antonio River in the rougher part of Southtown. The lease was signed and move-in was set for August 15, 2010 — 10BitWorks was born.
The first two members, Greg Bluntzer and Mike Perez, came in around the move-in, both drawn by game development. Year one was, in the narrative’s words, “little more than a big empty room with piles of junk scattered around.” Through the ATX Hackerspace connection, the two spaces ran one of 10Bit’s first successful simultaneous hackathons: Mike built a robot, Greg made a game, and the founder fiddled with Linux while Tweeks arrived with a pile of cheeseburgers and promptly locked his keys in his car — an hour of jimmying and lockpicking later, the door opened. The narrative cites that night as the moment that sold him on what a hackerspace could be.
Over the following years the group formalized: a proper board of directors, a corporate structure that moved from an LLC to a 501©(3) nonprofit in 2014 (Organization & Legal Identity carries the registered details; the point paper dates the IRS designation to November 28, 2014). The community footprint grew along the way — hosting city council members for meetings, a crowdfunding campaign that funded a laser cutter, keynote speaking at a tech conference, and support for maker faires and STEM nights.
The LLC-era name persisted on paper for a while: the 2017 Lachapelle lease lists the lessee as “10Bitworks Hackerspace, LLC”, and the DBA later shifted from “Hackerspace” to “Makerspace” to better communicate the mission.
The narrative closes: “10BitWorks continues to grow, and every time I’m there I see faces, new and old, with a passion and desire to learn, build, and play.” The story since 2016 — the Lachapelle era, the 2021 point paper, and the Botts Lane relocation — is documented across the Governance index and Projects sections.
The founding narrative PDF is unsigned. The Point Paper, January 2021 attributes the 2010 founding to San Antonio residents Christopher Hardee and Dirk Elmendorf, and the narrative’s first-person author signed the original DBA and lease, which matches that attribution.