Chicago is just getting close to reaching critical mass. The startups that succeeded here before did little to foster community. The startups here now are coming around to the idea of a start up community. It should be interesting to see how it plays out. The other problem here is that a bunch of the good hackers go to places like Citadel rather than do a startup.
Sounds like we should get a Chicago news.yc meetup going. I'm thinking something more frequent than Tech Cocktail, is there a Chicago OpenCoffee Club yet? I know someone's working on a StartupWeekend here: http://startupweekendchicago.wetpaint.com/
A news.yc meetup here would be great. OpenCoffee Club here has been ruined by MidPhase but theres no reason we can't set up a weekly or monthly meeting time at a coffee shop where news.ycers can come and go, with some way to identify ourselves like a post-it note on your laptop or something. Anyone up for it?
Campfire set up for organizing and just general ChiTown talk. http://ycombinator.campfirenow.com if you want an invite mail cubend#gmail.com Works well as a message board or a chatroom. I'll be in there off and on all week
Keith does a good job to develop community here though it seems beta is a bit stagnant. I believe he's still working on JobCoin as well as a pretty successful facebook app
