Unquestionably Chicago’s highest volume technology networking event, TECH cocktail is having their 10th edition of their business mixer next Thursday (Februrary 19). As part of the run-up to TECH cocktail 10, we’ve put a few questions to TECH cocktail co-founder Eric Olson about the origins of the event, their expansions (please note their Facebook page touts a potential expansion to New York City) and plans for tech community unity.

Chicago Tech News: While FeedBurner was going along nicely in May 2006, and arguably Chicago’s tech flavor of the month at the time, you and Frank Gruber were still a full year away from cashing out in the Google sale. Why did you decide to start a side-venture while your company was still in a relatively early stage? (more…)

If you’ve been around the Chicago tech scene long enough to remember the boom and bust cycle of the late 90s, you’d have to say that the scene has splintered in a big way. Every city has its niche groups and segments, but it used to be more a question of whether you heading to more of an Internet-focused group or a software-focused group. Biosciences were really a medical subset back then, for most purposes.

Today, you look around and the first thing you notice is there are two distinct camps in the tech community: Corporate and DIY.
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