The crowd titters. The crowd looks around. Four lonely hands go up.
Times are hard.
Let's just say that some hung on Mark Warner's words with the air of starving people before a banquet. This, too, shall pass. The rally, hosted by Telecom Hub, one of many networking organizations that have sprouted like dandelions in the lush fields of Northern Virginia's tech arena, could not have been more a symbol of the times. Located on the first floor of an office building amid empty cubicles, the event drew younger entrepreneurs as well as those who'd seen the cycle of boom and bust before. In the mid-'90s, Cecin started a cable and phone company in Venezuela.