Fox Valley tech,
in the same room.
STC Tech Network is a peer-led community of engineers, consultants, founders, IT pros, and AI builders living and working in Saint Charles and the surrounding Fox Valley. We meet to socialize, swap ideas, sharpen craft, and put faces to the people doing serious tech work in our backyard.
About
A community for the people doing the work.
Saint Charles and the Fox Valley have a quiet but deep technology footprint — talented people who support businesses throughout the Chicagoland area.
STC Tech Network exists to surface that talent and connect it. We're a peer-led group, not a sales channel: members come to learn from each other, find collaborators, and pull each other forward across roles and stacks.
If your work is technical, you live or work in the Fox Valley, and you'd rather know your neighbors than not — you belong here.
Software & AI
Engineers, ML practitioners, and AI builders comparing notes on what is shipping in production — and what is actually working.
Infrastructure & DevOps
Cloud, platform, and reliability folks trading hard-won lessons on scaling, observability, and keeping the pager quiet.
Security & IT
Defenders, IT leaders, and risk-minded technologists keeping each other current on a moving threat landscape.
Product & Leadership
PMs, founders, and team leads working through the people side of technology — hiring, scoping, and shipping with intent.
Events
One or two gatherings a quarter, all worth your evening.
We meet on a quarterly cadence — a few times a year, not every week. Every event is purposeful and usually capped to a size where you can actually meet people.
Happy hours & meetups
Low-key gatherings at local breweries and coffee shops. The fastest way to get your bearings if you're new to the network.
Topic roundtables
Small-group discussions on a single theme: hiring, security posture, choosing a stack, leading remote teams. Strong opinions welcome.
Lightning talks & deep dives
Members share what they're building — from production AI patterns to homegrown infrastructure war stories. Short format, real systems.
Hands-on workshops
Bring a laptop. Walk out with a working sample — an evals harness, a vector index, a deployment pipeline. Practice over slides.
Next up
AI in production: what's actually working in 2026
A roundtable with member engineers who shipped LLM-powered features this year. Real costs, real eval setups, real horror stories. Bring the questions you can't ask in a vendor webinar.
Confirmed dates and venues are sent to members ahead of each event. Join the network to get on the list.
Membership
Free to join. Worth showing up for.
There's no fee, no minimum commitment, and no "tiers." Membership is a signal that you want to be part of a Fox Valley technology community — and a way for us to invite you to the next event.
We do ask members to engage in good faith: come ready to share what you know, listen to what others are building, and treat the network as a community first.
Request to joinEvent invitations
First-look invites to talks, workshops, and roundtables — many capped to keep the room conversational.
A real peer network
Direct access to other Fox Valley technologists. Send a question on Slack and get useful answers from people who’ve solved it.
Speaking & teaching slots
Try out a talk in front of a friendly room. Run a workshop on something you’ve built. Members get first pick.
Hiring & project signal
Member-driven hiring posts and project collaborations — no recruiter spam, just people you actually know hiring people you actually know.
Who fits
Stack and title don't matter as much as the work. If you see yourself in any of these, you’re welcome.
- Software engineers, full-stack to systems
- AI / ML practitioners and applied scientists
- Cloud, platform, SRE, and DevOps
- Cybersecurity and IT leadership
- Data engineering and analytics
- Founders, technical PMs, and CTOs
- UX engineers and design technologists
- Independent consultants and freelancers
Join · Speak · Say Hello
Let's get you on the list.
Tell us who you are and where you work or what you build. We'll send the next invite. Speakers, sponsors, and curious neighbors all welcome.