Going Further with Ford

For the second year in a row the Ford Motor Company embarked on a unique venture within its industry by inviting hundreds of influencers from the online world to visit them at their global headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan to participate in a 3 day conference called “Further with Ford”.  This is also the second year that I have had the pleasure of attending and while some of the attendees were traditionally aligned with automotive journalism, there were influencers from the areas of technology, the environment, fashion and much much more.

Given the rather unique nature of the event, especially for an automotive company I decided that I would take an equally unique approach to covering the event as part of the Enviro Dad Test Drive series.  Since I’m often asked by my children to bring some of their stuffed friends along with me to remember them by when I travel for business, I thought it would be fun to document the conference though not only my point of view, but theirs as well.  I was joined this time around by “Steggy” the Stegosaurus and “Nuts” the Squirrell, and together Steggy & Nuts did a fine job documenting the conference which I’ve compiled together in the video below.

After two years in a row of attending this event I feel that by reaching out across many sectors to find influencers of all types, Ford has developed a unique way of ensuring their visioning for the future is properly aligned with what others feel as well.  Given the vast reach of automobiles in terms of demographics, other auto makers should strongly consider embarking on similar initiatives as well.

It’s not hard to realize that where trends are concerned you don’t want to be on the outside looking in, and for now at least it seems Ford has found a way to keep itself on the leading edge.