Tonight I'm at the Illinois Science and Technology Park outside Chicago for the NanoBusiness Alliance Holiday Party. This venue, graciously hosted by Alliance director Sean Murdock, has brought together a diverse group of nanotech businesspeople for some stimulating informal conversation.

Among the attendees are nanotech newcomers like Steven Brewer and Hao Shang of MagSense Life Sciences and James Hulvat of Nanotope mingling with the nanotech veterans from Nanosphere.

The biggest buzz among the partygoers is the Berkeley City Council's decision to regulate businesses dealing in nanoparticles, a move that makes the city the first local government to regulate nanotechnology. I did my PhD at Berkeley and had the opportunity to work alongside a councilperson and I know they are not as flaky as this decision makes them look.

But the illogic of the decision makes for interesting conversation at tonight's event: Can Berkeley handle the paperwork if, as the National Science Foundation predicts, half of all products contain nanoparticles by 2015? Will they ban bread and beer, since fermentation is a form of nanotechnology?

The Berkeley vote is inciting a lot of discussion throughout the nanotech community, and I'm grateful to Aatish Salvi, Alisa Kronshage, and everyone at NanoBusiness Alliance, as well as all the interesting guests at tonight's event, for the conversation.