Vice President Joe Biden to speak at Netroots Nation 2014 in Detroit, Michigan

Orga­niz­ers of Net­roots Nation, Amer­i­ca’s largest annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sive activists, took the wraps off of a major and wel­come sur­prise this after­noon with the announce­ment that Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden would be com­ing to Detroit to speak to the con­ven­tion dur­ing a spe­cial Thurs­day after­noon gen­er­al session.

Land­ing Biden is a big coup for Net­roots Nation. The con­ven­tion has been addressed by for­mer pres­i­dents and pres­i­dents, as well as con­gres­sion­al lead­ers and mem­bers of Con­gress, but this will be the first time that the sit­ting Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States will have spoken.

It will also be Biden’s first appear­ance at Net­roots Nation. He was invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the Pres­i­den­tial Lead­er­ship Forum held in Net­roots Nation’s sec­ond year, in Chica­go (back then, the con­ven­tion was known as Year­lyKos), but declined to attend due to his desire to par­tic­i­pate in anoth­er event. The oth­er con­tenders for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion — Barack Oba­ma, Hillary Clin­ton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Bill Richard­son, Den­nis Kucinich, Mike Grav­el — all showed up.

Raven Brooks, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Net­roots Nation, tout­ed Biden’s forth­com­ing keynote address in a blog post also emailed to atten­dees.

As you may know, Net­roots Nation came from hum­ble begin­nings: a group of activists sim­ply want­ed to come out from behind their screens and meet up in real life. Since that first meet­ing nine years ago, this con­fer­ence has grown into the largest gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sives in the nation, bring­ing the bright­est orga­niz­ers, inno­va­tors and thinkers togeth­er with lead­ing elect­ed offi­cials from up and down the ballot.

Some of our atten­dees will run this cycle’s hottest cam­paigns; oth­ers have start­ed or will start game-chang­ing orga­ni­za­tions with­in the next year. And every­one who attends does impor­tant work with­in their own com­mu­ni­ties after the con­fer­ence ends.

So it makes per­fect sense that Vice Pres­i­dent Biden would address the folks who will knock on doors, make phone calls and raise aware­ness for the issues that are most impor­tant to our country.

From his long­time sup­port of labor unions to speak­ing out on impor­tant issues like LGBT equal­i­ty, Vice Pres­i­dent Biden has in many ways giv­en heart and soul to this admin­is­tra­tion. We couldn’t be more excit­ed to wel­come him to Net­roots Nation for the first time.

We hope you’ll be there too.