Professional Courtesy: Small Ballot, Big Prizes by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, editorial director, Dentaltown magazine

by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, editorial director, Dentaltown magazine

This month’s issue of Dentaltown magazine marks the official launch of our annual Townie Choice Awards ballot. For the past 16 years, we’ve asked our Townies to vote for their favorite products in a multitude of categories. Winning a Townie Choice Award is the ultimate recognition for a product or service because it comes from our peers. The dentists working in their practices and sharing their product performance stories online every day at Dentaltown.com.

I’m excited to announce a number of changes we’ve introduced with the 2018 ballot. In previous years the ballot covered nearly 160 different product categories, in our attempt to cover every known product category. While this comprehensive approach was our noble attempt to be all-inclusive, we heard feedback from our voters that the ballot was simply too long. This year’s ballot will have fewer than 60 questions! We spent a number of weeks working through the old ballot and debating which categories would be part of this year’s ballot. We think the final result is representative of the most essential products in your practice and some newer technologies that everyone is talking about. Please make every effort to complete the ballot.

Our new streamlined ballot makes it possible for us to introduce mobile voting for the first time, which means Townies can easily complete their ballots not just on a desktop computer but also a tablet or smartphone. As you already know, the use of mobile devices has exploded in the past three years, and we want our rapidly growing base of mobile browsers to be part of the Townie Choice Awards experience. The interface will be optimized for speed, so you have the best chance for completing your ballot in a short amount of time.

When you take the time to vote, you have the opportunity to win one of the fabulous prizes that we’ll announce weekly until voting closes.

Plus, this year we’re offering two grand prizes, which will be drawn from the names of Townies who completed the entire ballot by Sept. 5:

• Free registration for Townie Meeting 2019 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
• A check for $1,000 and the chance to appear on the cover of the December issue of Dentaltown magazine.

Every completed question offers an additional chance to win one of the prizes. For all the details, head to dentaltown.com/tca.

Your participation is a big thank-you to the companies that help you deliver great dentistry and a simple way to help your colleagues around the country find the products and services they should try in their practices.

Look for the full list of winners in the December issue of Dentaltown magazine, and online that same month under the “More” tab on our website.

You can reach me on Twitter @ddsTom or via email tom@dentaltown.com.