Chicago On The Rise
As I have been saying for some time, the Midwest is ripe for a tech rebirth. The technology is here and the customers are here. Technology is commoditizing and inexpensive, but domain/industry expertise is worth its weight in gold. The key is finding the right entrepreneurs to lead the charge (they are here, just hiding out building their businesses) and better national connectivity. Julie Johnsson and Shruti Singh wrote two great pieces on the "The New Face of Technology Part 1" and "The New Face of Technology Part 2".
In fact, the mainstream in the Valley is beginning to take note as well as indicated by Om Malik's post from these articles (thanks to Anjali Gurnani of TiE and LisleTech fame for forwarding this onto me). Om is one of the senior writers at Business 2.0 out west.
TicketsNow, FeedBurner, 37 Signal and Hostway are just the beginning here...