Tragic the Gathering

The first Yearly Kos (now renamed Netroots Nation) was held in Las Vegas in 2006 with approximately 1500 activists, bloggers,  and assorted progressive riff-raff and DFH’s attending. It featured guest speakers  Sens. Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer along with Gen. Wesley Clark, Tom Vilsack, Bill Richardson, and Mark Warner and  portions of the proceedings were televised on C-Span.

Red State (est. 2004) and owned by Eagle Publishing is the "largest online community of conservative activists and the most widely read right of center blog on Capitol Hill" is having a little gathering in Atlanta in August and y’all are invited:

August 1, 2009, we will meet in Atlanta. By popular demand, we’ll have a full day of events and some special guests to hang out with.

We need you to do something though. We need you to commit to come and we’re going to ask you to commit with a $15.00 non-refundable registration fee. Why? Well, we will get a tremendous deal at one heck of a nice hotel in Atlanta if 80 of you agree to come and stay in the hotel.

And let’s be honest. We all know a lot of people will like the idea of coming, but if there is no financial commitment, might not come. We don’t want to be left holding the bag on this event. So, we’re asking you to prove you are coming by locking in with $15.00.

[...]

In exchange for the $15.00 and assuming we can get 80 people to get rooms at the hotel, here’s what we’re offering:

• 1 day to get to know each other and hear from some politicos. We’ll also have two very awesome groups make some presentations on activism, which is exactly what we need.
• $109.00 room rate at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta. It’s one of the nicest hotels in the city and that is an amazing rate. It is very near MARTA, the public transportation system, on a straight line from Atlanta’s airport.
• Breakfast will be included for free on Saturday and Sunday, as will a lunch on Saturday, and snacks throughout the day.
• Friday night and Saturday night cocktails.
• Everybody will get a RedState welcome package.
• Assuming we get 80 confirmed attendees quickly who need hotel rooms, we’ll get an even lower room rate for early bookers, and then a higher rate for late registrants.

Here, again, is the key. We need 80 people to stay at the Hyatt. My understanding from talking to a lot of you is that we’re going to have more than that. But we need the upfront commitment to lock things in.

They had me at  "two very awesome groups make some presentations on activism".

Awesome.