With over 150 attendees, two workshops brimming with brilliance and education, Brian’s signature eggnog, Seth and the Technori team decked out in their green Technori t-shirts and an incredible mixture of entrepreneurs, investors, designers and developers, the first midVentures DESIGN+DEVELOP Series // Holiday Tech Meetup (and Technori Launch Party) was a success!

Darren Marshall, co-founder of Doejo, covered the DESIGN workshop and filled the SYNC Tech Center’s Chicago room with participants eager to learn about his theories on the 48 hour concept, designing for you as if you’re the only customer, what it means to get a design right versus making it perfect and creating those magical moments of momentum.

Tyler Jennings of Obtiva shed his insight in the DEVELOP workshop about Ruby on Rails and why it works, Agile software development and how he goes about building software for startups. There wasn’t an empty seat or an uncaptivated face in the room.

And we got to meet Chicago startups MapDing, Concept Feedback, Improffice and Cloudbot at their demo tables.

This type of event  builds the momentum that the Chicago startup community needs. Entrepreneurs meet aspiring developers, investors meet potential startups and relationships are formed and created.  Between midVenturesLAUNCH, Technori’s community development and workshops such as these, Chicago is truly seeing the emergence of an exciting shift towards a true tech identity. What was truly inspiring was the amount of companies that were hiring.  These companies are the future of Chicago.

Let us know your experience. Feel free to leave comments on how you feel it went.

Click here for all the photos.