Here’s an interesting bit of spam that recently appeared in one of my mailboxes:
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On behalf of our Board, I wanted to personally invite you into The Product Development Summits because of your key role and experience.
Product Development? You know I complain about things on the Internet, right?
The Product Development Summits is an invitation-only group comprised of the very best Product Development executives and visionaries. We meet by Teleconference to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful Product Development leaders whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
Our meeting schedule is at productdevsummits(dot)org
I think someone mixed up the invites, but let’s see where this goes…
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The site claims to be a place where “an exclusive group of senior product development executives…meet monthly by virtual, interactive teleconferences to focus on important matters facing their business.”
Yes, you have to pay money to take part in a bunch of phone calls.
How much does it cost? I almost didn’t get that far as I was too distracted by this video embedded on the front page where a (nameless) person in a suit finishes a sentence with “…and we often hold each other accountable in excellence”, which is the most amazing way anybody could ever finish a sentence.
How much? This much: $900 for a year’s membership. But that’s not even the best (worst) part – this is:
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To apply using a secured form, please click “Go Secure” below.
Yes, you can fill in your personal information and your credit card data and send it on an insecure form instead of the offer to “go secure”. You know, if you really wanted to.
Digging around reveals a fair few of these missives in circulation over the last couple of years, with different senders and various URLs. There were CIO Summit invites back in 2008, along with a “CMO Summit” from around the same time. Finally the Dynamoo Blog covered one in 2010 for another CIO Summit.
I think on this occasion I’ll have to keep that $900 burning a sweet, sweet hole in my pocket while my mailbox trash can embraces another visitor for the low, low price of nothing at all.
Christopher Boyd
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