About Tech in the Middle

Gabe Garms and Scott Seely are the founders of Tech in the Middle. They are passionate about the Chicago tech community. In the summer of 2008, they began working on a problem that seemed to be on everyone’s mind: how can we give back to the Chicago tech community and make it stronger? We see that organizations like the Illinois Technology Association build a business environment which helps technology companies flourish. Tech Cocktail builds community amongst Chicago area technologists through ongoing, evening events.

Tech in the Middle fits into this mix too. We seek to fill the training needs of the developers, designers, and architects in Chicago. Today, the various vendors do a great job training people. User groups augment the vendor training with evening talks and other events. Both vendor and user group events tend to be technology and vendor specific. While this fills the day to day needs of a typical developer, it leaves a gap. If a developer is looking to move into a new technology such as cloud or mobile, the task of figuring out what to read, listen to, and attend is too much. Like all problems, this one leaves us with an opportunity. Tech in the Middle creates conferences and workshops that educate the software development community on the various vendor options. We work to bring in diverse viewpoints, expert speakers, and a community to learn with.

Our goal is to host 3 to 4 conferences per year, all in Chicago. A Tech in the Middle conference is vendor neutral, platform and language agnostic.First and foremost, we view ourselves as servants of the Chicago development community. Let us know what and who you would like to see. Tech in the Middle will work to make it happen!