A few weeks ago, Dell gave The VAR Guy an open invitation to write a guest entry on the Dell Channel Blog. The VAR Guy has been a bit distracted — and perhaps a bit perplexed — so he never took Dell up on the offer. Now, Dell is extending the offer far more broadly — inviting partners to submit a guest post on the Dell Channel Blog. Wow. This could get interesting. Here’s why.

Lots of folks assume Dell will sanitize or censor a guest blog. But The VAR Guy begs to differ.

Dell continues to listen to criticism and constructive feedback whenever possible. When channel magazines and legacy print publications trash Dell for its direct sales heritage, it’s difficult for the PC giant to fight back — or at least engage in a dialog. Sure, you can submit a letter to the editor…. and wait… and wait… to see it show up in print.

In the online world, Dell is more than happy to interact with its critics in realtime. The Dell Channel Blog is the latest in a growing list of Web 2.0 sites from Dell. One of the most engaging is Ideastorm — where readers submit and vote on ideas. And Dell actually acts on a few of them.

The blog is designed to be an open forum for the greater PartnerDirect community. That’s why at anytime, you’re welcome to submit a guest post.

So far, Dell’s channel blog has been pretty tame. When The VAR Guy first heard Dell was preparing to launch the blog, our resident author said he had five hopes for the new Dell blog:

By inviting partners to write blogs on the Dell site, it looks like Dell is tackling items 1 and 5 on The VAR Guy’s list. If you’re interested in stirring up some discussion, here’s how to submit your blog to Dell.