What should be the focus of my informal private club (or IPC)?

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Before you begin recruiting for your IPC, you need to have some idea of what you want the club to be about. It doesn’t have to be a narrow focus, but you need to be able to state the purpose, no matter how broad. If you’re looking at doing cocktail parties, dinners, dances and similar gatherings, then you’re looking at a social club. If you’re wanting to rub elbows with fellow engineers, programmers, lawyers, and the such, then consider a professional club. I don’t recommend going too much into detail as far as the focus; you want to leave as much room for growth and discussion as possible. A diversity of personalities and experiences is what you’re looking for, and becoming too specific may result in the club lacking any sense of dynamic.

Here’s a list of areas you can form an IPC around:

• Social: Mentioned this above, but I consider this the easiest IPC to create and manage. You can run a purely social IPC, or you can incorporate social aspects into IPCs with another focus.
• Professional: While we’re talking about things already mentioned above, a professional club is another possibility, and one that can have a profound impact in your career field.
• Field: This speaks more to academic fields and pursuits like literature, history, psychology and the like. This focus would be aimed more at amateur interests, rather than professional.
• Hobby: Much like IPCs for fields, hobby IPCs would speak to the hobby in a broad sense, rather than getting down into the pieces and parts. This kind of detail would be reserved for event topics.

I’ll write more on specific IPCs and what you should consider when creating them, as well as adding to the list above as we develop the IPC concept.