Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Summit will be in DC March 30-31

The Rise of the Rest is coming to D.C.

In a profile of Steve Case’s four-year-running, country-crossing, innovation-outside-Silicon-Valley-promoting bus tour, WIRED revealed that this year, at the end of March in fact, Case is bringing “the rest” to our own backyard.

It’s called the Rise of the Rest Summit, and it’ll take place March 30-31.

We're taking a short break from the road to convene founders and local leaders in D.C.! @WIRED has the story: https://t.co/aUOwneEevh pic.twitter.com/G9qlK1CWZp

— Rise of the Rest (@RiseOfRest) March 10, 2017

It’ll be about encouraging entrepreneurship across the country, sure, but also about something more. Something more in line with current political zeitgeist. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election, Rise of the Rest’s focus outside coastal cities carries a new (or at least reinvigorated) meaning.

As the WIRED article puts it, “the meeting carries obvious symbolic weight. By coming together in the wake of a new administration, these middle American entrepreneurs can show East Coast Washington elites that you can boost the economy in other ways beyond gutting regulation and retreating from trade deals.”

“There’s no question that just relying on big companies and just relying on old industries to be the mainstay of economic growth is a misguided strategy,” Ron Klain, executive vice president of Case’s VC firm Revolution and former chief of staff to both vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden told WIRED. “We have to take some of the fantastic opportunities in tech and bring them to the rest of the country.”

Read the full WIRED profile of Rise of the Rest and the upcoming summit here.