WASHINGTON--Google's Eric Schmidt is dining Friday night with Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina in Chicago--at Cafe Spiaggia--the day after Obama hosted a townhall meeting at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.

I'm told by a Democratic source the Schmidt/Messina dinner at the upscale eatery on Michigan Avenue is part of the Obama team wooing and coordinating with the tech world--from developing relationships with the top honchos to developing the best mobile apps for political communication.

Obama Facebook townhall transcript is here.

Feb. 17: Obama dines with high tech leaders in Woodside, Calif. Among those present: Schmidt, FacebookCEO Mark Zuckerberg, Carol Bartz, Yahoo! President and CEO; Art Levinson, Genentech Chairman.

Flashback: Schmidt hosted Obama at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. during the Democratic primary campaign in November, 2007.

From my column then: "Google CEO Eric Schmidt tested the geek in Obama, asking him "the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit intergers." Obama, coming prepared said, "I think the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go,'' which is, of course, as you all know, a computer science reference to a sorting algorithm."