1871 Beta Opening

This morning I walked into a place that I’ve been many times before over the last couple of months, but this was different.  On the 12th floor of The Merchandise Mart, around 9am, a bunch of digital entrepreneurs started to show up and began working on building their digital businesses.  At around 10am, we all gathered in the Assembly space @1871Chicago to welcome our new launch startups plus Code Academy to our first day together in the space.  Here’s a pic:

After that, a strange thing happened….everyone just went to a desk, jumped on the high-speed access, and went to work.  I was kind of expecting a million questions – especially in “beta” opening – where is some of the furniture, do the bathrooms work, why isn’t Intelligentsia open yet?  But instead, entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do – they focus on building their startups – relentlessly.

Later in the day, I ran over to check out Dag Kittlaus (@DagK), the founder of Siri, speak about his journey @Technori.  He had the crowd speechless with his visions for the  future of technology.  He also made a passionate plea to develop more and better technical talent for Chicago’s startups.  Here’s a pic:

Then I cabbed back to 1871 at The Merchandise Mart and walked into an amazing experience.  Code Academy Demo Day – practice!  So tomorrow night, Wednesday, 3/28, 1871 is hosting our first event – the @CodeAcademy Demo Day.  Here’s a pic of practice:

It’s only been about 12 hours since our “beta” opening and already I completely understand why this place was built.  It was created for the incredible entrepreneurs we have in Chicago to come together to build their businesses, share their ideas, learn from each other, get connected, and change the world.

If this was day 1, I can’t wait for tomorrow….