We are at the TechCocktail Spring Showcase in Chicago tonight with a bunch of cool companies. The event was hosted partly by Cars.com. We heard speeches from the folks at TrunkClub, Power2Switch, and BrightTag. 

I had a great time talking to Eddie (@onebigstory) from Northwestern University who was working on a story about Chicago Startups and politics. 

There was also some serious negativity expressed about this post on PandoDaily which compared the startup cultures of Chicago and Silicon Valley. Personally I’m tired of every other region in the country trying to make it the Silicon-something of somewhere. Chicago is Chicago. Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley. I’m sure if people in Silicon Valley tried to start making Fords and Chevys they would get laughed at for sipping too many lattes and riding bicycles all the time. The point is that America is big enough and economically diverse that the economies that produce a GroupOn vs Google vs. whatever else are precisely what makes the overall economy so dynamic.