Start Your Own Version of Renaissance Weekends

Good morning, Live Better than a Billionaire-a-Holics!

Would you like to host thousands of world-famous celebrities every month at no cost? Most people would.

Here's how to begin. Pick a weekend that is usually free of family activities but when many people have free time. For many, this is the weekend closest to New Year's Eve. Many companies and organizations all but shut down between Christmas and New Year's.

Make room in your home . . . or ask someone with a larger home to partner with you.

Invite the most interesting people you know to spend the Saturday with you for lively discussions about important topics. Have an agenda filled with provocative topics. Ask each person in advance to speak briefly (somewhere between 2-10 minutes) to either the whole group . . . or to a breakout session of the whole group on one of the agenda's topics. Allow plenty of time for comments and questions from the others. If you have great speakers, give them a chance to share their views for 15 minutes to the whole group. Give everyone who attends a "pot luck" assignment to cover food and beverages.

Here are some potential topics to get you started:

If I Were President; Something's Been Bugging Me Lately; What's Wrong with ______; The Investment Opportunity Everyone's Missing; What I Learned from the Election; My Most Unusual Vacation; Hobbies You've Never Heard of; and New Year's Resolutions.

Naturally, if you want to move off of public issues, you can tie your topics to some area that your guests have in common. If they are all sports fans, you could focus your topics around provocative sports questions. The idea is to come up with opportunities to sound off on topics the person doesn't normally share with others . . . but about which others will care about what is said.

At the end of the Saturday, send out a questionnaire to each attendee asking who else should attend next time (and how to contact that person), advice on whether or not to expand to two days, and how else to improve the session.

You're probably wondering where the celebrities come in. You don't have to know a celebrity to invite them. Do a good job and someone in the group will begin to suggest you contact celebrities they know. The celebrities will come, and they will suggest you invite their friends. Be sure to keep all the discussions "off the record" or the celebrities won't want to attend or speak.

By the way, you know celebrities. You just don't realize that you do. Who someone else considers to be a celebrity may just be someone who is your friend, college roommate, colleague at work or co-volunteer at a charity.

Donald W. Mitchell, Your Dream Concierge

Copyright 2005 Donald W. Mitchell

Be sure to check out my blog dated May 30, 2005 on Plan Your Best Fourth of July! To find that blog, keep clicking on the oldest blog entry you can find in the right hand column until you find the title "Plan Your Best Fourth of July."