"We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."
— Benjamin Franklin
Just a reminder that Jason Rexilius’s BarCamp is this Saturday (from 12pm) to Sunday (8pm) at 648 W. Randolph, 3rd Floor. Over 90 people have signed up, with another 30+ as maybe’s. Why is this a key event? Well, pardon me while I diverge…
Evolution is driven by emergent behaviour. This happens when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours as a collective. This often leads to unexpected consequences. Evolution, as our partner Steve Jurvetson often points out, occurs at the edges this way. The power of the collective (or network) grows exponentially (some would argue actually n times the logarithm of n) with the number of connected members (Metcalf’s Law). The Valley is drowning in networked collectives. Chicago is dry as a dessert. No one in the tech community knows anyone else here.
I have been keen on getting a series of Hack-a-thons and other similar events for developers and techies to get to know each other. Everyone in tech here works in isolated islands. It makes sharing best practices, recruiting, passing industry buzz that much easier. Hack-a-thons are much more than just a social event. People bring their projects and work and co-create/share. The topics are driven by the community and have meat to them. As a VC, I am tired of our local companies searching for months to find a good DBA or coder because our developers don’t have legions of other developers they know/hang out with. This isn’t their fault, but the community’s.
I hope that this is the beginning of a new generation of tech-related, self-forming networking events. If you are tech inclined, attend…