Dear SiliconPrairieSocial Readers,
On March 28, 2013, Arthur Zards, President of XNet Information Systems & founder of SiliconPrairieSocial (SPS) and Jim Huguelet, President of The Huguelet Group LLC & co-founder of Chicago Tech After Hours (ChiTAH) jointly announced plans to combine a large portion of SPS into ChiTAH to form a major technology networking series for the western Chicago suburbs. SPS, which began holding events in 2007, and ChiTAH, which began holding events in 2009, host regular networking events that have drawn nearly 2,000 attendees from the technology community together over the past 7 years.
“ChiTAH has always had the same philosophy as SiliconPrairieSocial: connecting local members of the technology community with their peers for the benefit of everyone,” said Zards. “I’m excited to be able to see the mission of SPS continued through ChiTAH in the years to come.”
“Silicon Prairie Social served as inspiration for creating ChiTAH several years ago, and through the years we’ve borrowed several SPS ideas for organizing and running ChiTAH events,” said Huguelet. “Being able to bring SPS and ChiTAH together is a great development for the suburban technology community.”
In the future, large networking events will be held under the ChiTAH moniker but will include past participants from SPS.
SPS, however, will not be vanishing completely. While the majority of group’s membership and resources will be merged with ChiTAH, SPS will be transforming into a more intimate, small-scale peer group specifically designed for business owners and C-level executives who wish to share information and explore ideas with a close-knit, trusted group of business individuals.
The objective of this transformation is to ensure that SPS members have access to the growing group of tech-minded individuals that ChiTAH provides, while bringing the SPS event itself back to its roots of creating meaningful dialog between local business leaders. As Zards states, “By combining SPS and ChiTAH resources, it allows both of our groups to provide networking opportunities to all types of individuals with all types of networking needs.”
The first combined event, ChiTAH 008/SPS 2013, is in the final stages of planning for spring 2013 and is expected to be announced in the next week.
SPS’s first peer group will also be announced soon, so stay tuned for information!
For more information on Chicago Tech After Hours, please visit http://www.chitah.org/
Thank you for your readership these past years. We look forward to meeting you in our peer group and at ChiTAH events!
The SiliconPrairieSocial Team
