OK smarty-pants, why don't you show us? Announcing Project Dogfood!

I'm often asked to critique a site, blog, YouTube video and the like. Hell, that's easy! I just say what I think. A typical top-of-mind reaction I offer might be, "Your site looks cool, but I think you're being egotistical. Write for your buyers instead by eliminating gobbledygook and jargon." (I've said this over a hundred times. Look at your site, perhaps it applies to you too.) Or I might say, "Your video is too long. Shorten it to less than two minutes." I'll admit that it's freakin' easy to act smart when its not you who is doing the work!

So here's an opportunity to test not only my thoughts and ideas but also those of social media gurus Chris Brogan and Paul Gillin. And yours as well. Chris, Paul and I have teamed up to create the New Marketing Summit, an event we’re running in October. Paul and I are co-chairs and keynote speakers. CrossTech Media where Chris works as "resident genius" is the producer of the event and Chris will be speaking too.

Project Dogfood (an experiment in community and transparency) is our way to "eat our own dogfood" as we're opening up the development of the event Web site to your scrutiny, advice, and comments. The main thrust will be a revamp of the New Marketing Summit site to transform it from the current one-way placeholder "brochureware" into a social media driven interactive site.

It's kinda scary actually. We'll no doubt do some dumb things and mess up right in front of your eyes. But hey, you gotta put yourself out there, right?

Please stop by and create an account (the platform we’re using to talk about this all is the Clearspace platform from Jive Software) and jump into the discussions. Hopefully our open development will be of interest to marketing and PR types, web technologists, SEO experts, and social media evangelists.

Our learning (and your valuable input) will not only make the event site better, but it will also form the basis of one of the sessions at the event itself. We'll have the Project Dogfood experiment to talk about at the New Marketing Summit this October 14th-15th at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts (near Boston).

What do you think? Stop by Project Dogfood and let us know. And then register for the New Marketing Summit to hear about your contributions as we discuss Project Dogfood live.

Comments

[Kristi Grigsby]

Hey David - sounds like you've masterminded a fabulous plan with a great team behind it. We'll look forward to seeing this event take shape - and will see you at projectdogfood.com :-)

[Jacqueline S]

The New Marketing Summit looks great. I'm particularly excited about "Brands and Reputation in an All Media World" on Day 2.