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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe much-anticipated Rally innovation conference kicks off Monday afternoon at the Indiana Convention Center, although the real action and all of the high-profile speakers (Peyton Manning, Magic Johnson, Guy Raz, etc.) will be Tuesday through Thursday.
As many as 5,000 people are expected to attend, but the goal of the event’s organizer—Elevate Ventures—is to grow Rally into something much more prominent in the years to come.
We’re eager to see what happens.
We love the spunk Elevate Ventures and CEO Christopher Day have shown in dreaming up Rally, which one Elevate official says is meant to spur “creative collisions” between entrepreneurs, investors and others who can advance the state’s innovation economy.
It will be an expensive endeavor—both to stage and to attend. (Individual tickets cost $600, but there are plenty of discount options floating around.) Elevate won’t release its budget but has acknowledged events of Rally’s scale generally cost more than $2 million to organize. Speaker fees alone can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The IEDC provided $1.5 million to sponsor Rally, and some 20 other organizations and companies have kicked in cash and in-kind contributions. (IBJ Media is a sponsor, although the IBJ newsroom has no connection with the deal.)
As IBJ tech reporter Susan Orr reported earlier this month, Rally replaces an Elevate Ventures event called Kinetic, which was a much smaller annual event focused on connecting Elevate Ventures’ portfolio companies with potential investors and other resources.
Rally’s vision is much grander: to position Indiana as a globally known innovation hub.
That’s a vision we can get behind.
But we know it’s a long-term play. Few events are home runs in their first year out. Although the goal is 5,000 attendees, organizers have said it might be closer to 3,500 or so this year. And while it’s unlikely Elevate will release any detailed numbers, the event might not do well financially.
Still, we appreciate the bigger goal of creating a can’t-miss, Midwest-based innovation conference, something that commands the attention of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, researchers and big-thinkers from the coasts and from across the world. There’s no reason an event like that can’t take place in Indianapolis. And while there’s no guarantee Rally will become that big or that important, you certainly won’t get there without trying.
Already encouraging is that at least seven other state and regional events are piggybacking on Rally, with events planned this week in downtown Indy.
Wisconsin-based Gener8tor, the Indiana Technology and Innovation Association and the not-for-profit Indy Women in Tech Inc., or IWiT, are all hosting their annual conferences this year in conjunction with Rally. And several other organizations are planning social and/or networking events that are explicitly tied to Rally.
That confluence of events is what could make Rally special and help it become a destination for entrepreneurs, technologists and innovators from across the region and the nation.•
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