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In an opulent Park City ski lodge, business titans and political leaders will privately discuss the weighty challenges facing the world.
This is what Mitt Romney always envisioned his "Experts and Enthusiasts" summit would be, a place to debate and discuss American leadership, but coming just a few days after the end of the primaries, presidential politics will continue to loom over the event.
Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, will guide the fourth-annual E2 Summit beginning Thursday evening, when he welcomes his guests at an introductory dinner. It's unclear whether he'll discuss the general election pitting Democrat Hillary Clinton against Republican Donald Trump, the two candidates he has vowed to oppose.
His attempts to court an independent conservative candidate have gone nowhere and so far, he's rebuffed repeated entreaties to jump into the race himself.
It's hard to gather such people as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who has grudgingly endorsed Trump, and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who has vigorously denounced Trump, and expect the conversation won't eventually turn to the presidential contest.
"It does loom over it," said Boyd Matheson, president of the Utah-based Sutherland Institute, who attended the summit last year and is expected to make an appearance this year as well. "It is kind of splattered on everything."
Also in attendance, according to CNN, will be former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and a few other political leaders, such as Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton.
That's a big shift from what took place a year ago, when six Republican presidential candidates strutted their stuff before Romney's influential network of donors and the media horde there to document the mostly closed-door event.
Candidates such as Ohio Gov. Jon Kasich and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham gave interview after interview, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was wowing the business elite.
A week after the event, Trump, the celebrity billionaire, famously took the escalator in the lobby of Trump Tower to announce his presidential bid.
The party outsider destroyed the Republican field, tearing down his opponents with blunt nicknames like Lyin' Ted Cruz and Little Marco Rubio, on his way to the nomination.
Romney gave a nationally televised speech at the University of Utah in March calling Trump a "phony, a fraud," and arguing that Trump didn't have the temperament or ideas to be president. It instantly catapulted him to the forefront of the faltering "Never Trump" movement and adds intrigue to this week's gathering.
One CNN report called the summit "the closest thing to a safe space for conservatives who agree that Trump is not a Republican in the mold of their 2012 Republican nominee."
It isn't expected to be a Trump-bashing event, with presenters coming from a variety of backgrounds, but it's highly likely that supporters will ask Romney how he and other conservatives should respond to a nominee that they find unpalatable.
The event comes just days after Trump set off a firestorm by repeatedly making the racist argument that a judge couldn't fairly rule in a fraud case against him because of his Mexican heritage.
Matt Waldrip, the executive director of the E2 Summit, told CNN: "We'll hear from various viewpoints on what it means to be a Republican. People will make a big deal out of that, but that's not a new debate."
Matheson sees this weekend as a chance for Romney to shift the discussion to something broader than the presidential horse race.
"This is Mitt at his best, being a convener, raising issues and allowing people to think strategically or creatively," he said. "I also think it will be an interesting pivot, not to the fall election, but more to the future, some of the global issues of the economy and jobs, things that are not going to be fixed by whoever is in control of Congress and whoever lives in the White House."
A smaller media contingent is expected to attend the event, but reporters won't be able to hear those discussions, which will be off-limits to the public.