Good news for Chicago-area entrepreneurs: after last year’s wildly successful event, Startup Weekend is coming to Chicago Ideas Week this October! For those of you who don’t know what Startup Weekend is, here’s a quick primer: it’s a 54-hour entrepreneurship competition. To start, prospective startup founders pitch their ideas to the crowd; teams begin to coalesce around the most promising ideas. From there, it’s basically a weekend-long bonanza of hacking (if you’re a developer), making things beautiful (if you’re a designer) and strategizing (if you’re a businessperson). At the end of the weekend, the startups present their products, ideas, apps, etc. to a panel of judges. The winners (and runners-up) typically get prize packages of cash, free space, consulting and legal help. But, most importantly, they get recognition, and anyone who’s ever spent any time in a startup knows how valuable that is. The event, hosted at Excelerate Labs between October 14-16, is organized by four University of Chicago students. The registration fee is discounted for students from UChicago, DePaul, Northwestern, UIC, and other colleges around Chicago. Anyone is welcome to attend, regardless of previous entrepreneurship experience. If you’re a student, Sign up here and say that you’re attending on the Startup Weekend Ideas Week Facebook event page. If you’re not a student, buy your ticket on Eventbrite. Bring your A-Game, fellow entrepreneurs. It’s going to be a blast.