While I respect your opinion, I will say that for someone from the midwest who's never been to SV until yesterday, it does feel like something out of a science fiction movie. Its just so vastly different out here in the midwest. Hell, I can't start a conversation about currying and mapreduce even if I stand in the middle of my university's comp science department and scream. And yet, in SF, the buzz is so palpable it feels outright weird. In the span of a few minutes in which I sipped some coffee, the chap next to me drew up some enterprise routing system for something called postgres. Another bloke gave a demo of some ipad thingy called doctor krono. And a third chap was going on and on about some series A series C thingy. I dare you to find a place in Chicago where all of these things happen. Or even any of these things happen.