Gợi ý cách tặng quà cảm ơn cho diễn giả và khách VIP

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Dear Dan,

What's the best way to give a guest speaker a gift they would truly love and appreciate (cảm kích, đánh giá cao)?

—Wilma

Not long ago, I gave some lectures (bài giảng, diễn thuyết) to a very nice group of people. At the end of the retreat (rút lui, rút quân; nơi ẩn dật, nơi tu đạo), they held an auction (đấu giá) of all kinds of souvenirs (đồ lưu niệm), and I bid on a homemade blanket that I particularly liked. Later that night, I discovered, they took the blanket out of the auction after I bid on it and gave it to me as a gift (quà tặng).

This was particularly nice for three reasons. First, I clearly liked the blanket because I bid on it. Second, I assumed that other people also wanted it. And finally, it didn't have a real market value. All this made it a wonderful, highly appreciated gift without a specific price tag.

If you're willing to be a bit manipulative, you could take this approach a step further: What if you held a live auction, and when you saw something that the guest speaker was interested in, you got other people to dramatically outbid him or her (offering, say, 10 times more than the speaker would)—and, at the end of the night, gave the item in question to the speaker? This process would make clear that your guest coveted the item, as did other people, and that its value was very high. Clearly an ideal gift.

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