RE3EL STANCE

There is a growing influence in the next generation of the web from places not traditionally considered the center of tech innovation.  Though that’s a point that’s hard to argue against, I’ll save evidence of that for another day and instead focus on one in particular…Chicago.

I love Chicago.  It has energy.  It has creativity.  It has style mixed with being down to earth.  And, it has culture…lots and lots of culture.  So, when I touched down in the city a few days ago I was excited to explore the culture of the place again.  What has been even more exciting though is how the culture of the place has created an energy that is really feeding a culture of web entrepreneurs as well. 

If you have been following along, you have heard stories of the likes of Feedburner, Threadless and 37 Signals, rebel companies led by rebel entrepreneurs.  But, there is a lot of activity that you probably don’t hear much about.  You may not have heard that the latest “Tech Cocktail” filled a local pub with over 500 people passionate about the web and tech business.  You probably haven’t heard that “Beta Chicago” continues to bring together fast charging web entrepreneurs building great and innovative businesses.  You may not know that the city has one of the best organized and robust web education support systems in Digital Bootcamp.  And, you may not have heard of some of the great upstarts and events that are worth following (for those I’ll leave it up to the likes of Beta Chicago to keep us all updated of the start-ups as they spring). 

I have little doubt that the fastest moving web activity will continue in the Bay Area, but I also am confident that web entrepreneurship will keep developing in cities all over the planet.  And, Chicago isn’t a city I would bet against continuing to grow as an epicenter for a number of reasons:

• It is an international city with easy access to the “flat world”
• It has become much more entrepreneurial in recent years and you see evidence of that every turn you make in the city
• It has success stories to point to and inspire the local community
• It is well organized to enable networking among the web community
• It is committed to learning and teaching about next generation web practices (it has truly embraced Ruby on Rails from the beginning and is home to Adrian Holovaty of Django fame)
• It continues to be somewhat affordable to support bootstrappers

Sure, the city needs more venture capital support.  And, sure, it is more of a challenge to find web experienced employees here than in Northern California.  But, the world is flat, the web world is even flatter, and if the people of Chicago can overcome another losing season at Wrigley Field and weeks where the temperatures don’t get up past the single digits, they can certainly overcome those.