Five years ago I put up a post at RedState asking if, after four years of knowing each other online, did anyone want to get together in Atlanta to meet face to face. I expected a few dozen to say yes. More than 400 did. Thus the RedState Gathering was born.Each year, the first weekend in August, we meet somewhere. Elected officials and candidates join us to have a conversation. They speak for fifteen minutes and spend another answering questions. They talk about what they care about and answer questions based on what you care about. Many of them hang around.To be honest, it is not a fancy event. There’s no fancy music choreography. There’s no MC booming over a microphone. It is not CPAC or one of the other fancy conventions. This is about you. The speakers pay their own way. They answer your questions. You get to interact with each other.We don’t do silly dead-end panel conversations weighing the future of some esoteric topic and how it impacts conservatives. We meet for each other and to see the conservative leaders who fight with us, for us, and beside us. We meet the conservative candidates RedState readers help get elected. We set aside pretensions in favor of shared activist goals.This is why I love the RedState Gathering. It’s not about backslapping donors and providing lobbyist access into the conservative movement. It’s about conservatives spending time with conservatives — the elected, the candidates, and the grassroots who help them.This year we are delighted to be joined by Governors Jindal, Haley, and Perry, Attorney General Cuccinelli, Senators Cruz and Scott, Congressmen Bridenstine, Mulvaney, and Scalise, and we’ll be announcing more shortly. The room block is almost filled and the discounted registration is almost expired. But you’ve got a chance still to register at a discount and get a room.The RedState Gathering will be in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 1st through the 4th. The two active days will be the 2nd and 3rd. But you’re going to want to make sure you are there by the evening of the 1st so you don’t miss anything. You can register and get access to the room block by going to http://www.redstategathering.com.Five years in, we’ve seen most of the candidates we’ve supported at the RedState Gathering get elected — some even as primary challengers to powerful incumbent Republicans. We’re going to present some new challengers this year too. I look forward to seeing you there.