I'll just pipe in for Milwaukee's tech scene. We've been holding BarCampMilwaukee every year since 2006. We also have Web414, a monthly meetup of web nerds, as well as more specific meetups for Drupal, Ruby, .NET, PHP, as well as Web Design Meetups. There are occasional DevHouses and Hacker House events, as well as co-working space and Milwaukee Makerspace is opening this month. I'm not as familiar with Madison but there's a scene there as well. They just had their 3rd BarCamp in August, and Web608 is a sister group to Web414. There's Ignite Madison and probably more, but I don't even live there.
If you want a tech scene to happen, you need to WORK to make it happen. Or just complain about it and move to a city where someone else has already done all the work.