[rstevenson542]

1871 is probably the best co-working space I have ever seen. There are many great Chicago startups that share office space in their office down at Merchandise Mart. They offer many different entrepreneurship courses as well.

Code Academy is an excellent startup to check out. Their offices are located at 1871 in Merchandise Mart.

Someone above already said Technori. A ton of great Chicago startup people show up to the networking event held before the actual Technori presentation.

I have heard good things about the Chicago Lean Startup Circle meetup group.

If you are either a web developer or designer you should checkout Refresh Chicago as well. Every Refresh meeting I have been to was definitely worthwhile. The presentations are normally pretty technical though.

Code and Coffee meetup group is worthwhile for developers that don't mind waking up early. I've paired with some great developers and learned a lot.

I would highly recommend checking out all of the above. Chicago definitely has a great startup scene. Being pretty introverted, I initially had to really push myself to get out and meet people. TRUST ME, it is worthwhile.