I have been along to a couple of SAAA meetings recently with the intent of joining, and found it really inspiring. The conversation was almost exclusively about building, and the first question anyone asked was "What are you building?" If you replied that you weren't yet, the response was to question what was stopping you! If you said that you were interested in RVs, you were steered towards a few people currently building them, then towards a few who were flying them. If you wanted to build in wood, someone with a wood project was quickly found to talk to.
Interestingly a number of them weren't yet pilots, while quite a few more only had GFPTs or low hour PPLs. They were there to discuss building first, flying second. But that could just have been the chapter that I went to as well.