And from Verlyn Klinkenborg's editorial in today's Times

Recently, I have been considering the four-way stop. It is, I think, the most successful unit of government in the State of California. It may be the perfect model of participatory democracy, the ideal fusion of “first come, first served” and the golden rule. There are four-way stops elsewhere in the country. But they are ubiquitous in California, and they bring out a civility — let me call it a surprising civility — in drivers here in a state where so much has recently gone so wrong.

What a four-way stop expresses is the equality of the drivers who meet there. It doesn’t matter what you drive. For it to work, no deference is required, no self-denial. Precedence is all that matters, like a water right in Wyoming. Except that at a four-way stop on the streets of Rancho Cucamonga everyone gets to take a turn being first.

I don't suppose that there's really that much distance between these two approaches, but I find the mood and the civility of Klinkenborg's much more appealing.

"Creating a positive future begins in human conversation.
The simplest and most powerful investment any member of a community or an organization may make in renewal is to begin talking with other people as though the answers mattered." —William Greider

Regardless of your profession, industry, or community, there is great knowledge and creativity going untapped in it.  Books like The Wisdom of Crowds and Crowdsourcing offer insights about the value of engaging individuals' ideas and interests.  Online communities, wikis, and other platforms enable us to to do.  Face-to-face gatherings can be enhanced using simple meeting technologies like The World Cafe.

Imagine bringing them all together periodically in an integrated format to focus on a compelling question of interest to your members and stakeholders.  Imagine meaningful conversations happening at the grassroots level and the ideas they generate being shared across your members in real-time.  Imagine these types of conversations happening throughout the year, each addressing a different topic.  Imagine the change that might be possible.  Companies like IBM do exactly this in events such as Innovation Jam.

What if associations created Conversation Kits—each focusing on a compelling question of interest to its members—and then scheduled periodic industry-wide Days of Conversation?

A kit might include:

• A brief guide on facilitating great conversations
• Podcasts, video clips, and short essays offering fresh thinking on the compelling question
• Sample agendas of varying lengths for how the discussions could be structured
• Links to an online site where output from the conversations could be shared

The goal is to engage at the local level your entire membership or community in a simultaneous exploration of an important issue or question, capture the ideas and insights from those conversations in real-time, promulgate that output back to your members, and then use it internally to guide existing efforts and identify innovative opportunities to now pursue.

Public speaking comes with a lot of assumptions baked into it--forms, formats and formalities that have been used over and over again for centuries. Here's the basic recipe: Someone, the expert, strides to the front, gets introduced, stands behind a lectern on a raised platform and speaks for 30 minutes to an hour, perhaps taking a few audience questions at the end, but only if time permits. People in the audience listen, and clap at the beginning and end. There might be handouts to take away with more information, or business cards.

More and more, I'm seeing that standard recipe get re-mixed, thanks to the influence of social media--and not just one kind of social media, either.  Here are the six ingredients of speeches and presentations that are getting tossed and turned in the process:

1. Who speaks:  Today's audiences expect to speak, share, question and contribute--so much so, I encourage my trainees to open their presentations with a Q&A session, to get the audience participating right away.  All forms of social media, from networks like Facebook and Twitter to online video and blogging, have given "the people formerly known as the audience" a series of microphones and platforms of their own, and they're using them. 
2. Who shares: Once upon a time, only three people controlled what was shared outside the meeting room: The organizer, the speaker and any journalists who were covering the session.  Today, the tools for sharing what's happening, live and in real time, are right in your mobile phone or laptop. 
3. Who stands where:  At a TEDx event in New York focused one education, speaker Jeff Jarvis told his listeners, "You should be up here."  He was speaking to the audience's expertise, but many speakers also are moving into the audience to hold listeners' attention, make a stronger connection and provide some visual variety.  Standing behind the lectern's falling more and more by the wayside.
4. Who listens:  Listening in doesn't require being in the room anymore, thanks to the backchannel on Twitter and similar sites. That also means that "listeners" can scroll through an account of your talk hours, days or months later. You may need to provide more context online, including your slides, the text of your remarks or additional comments.  I've taken to creating blog posts with useful links after my major addresses--they become the "handout" and the context, all in one.
5. Who watches:  With a webcam on a laptop, a cellphone or a Flip camera or other ultralight camcorder, your audience can record and upload your remarks within minutes--or choose to livestream it.  Speakers who address audiences with "just between us in this room" remarks, beware. 
6. And for how long:  The instant gratification, speed and variety of information available in social media can't be matched in most formal speeches.  Attention spans are getting shorter, which is why I recommend that speakers need a strong, fast start.  No matter how much time you're allotted, use far less for your formal remarks. Open it up for questions, take some Twitter breaks and get the audience involved.

Denise Graveline's title for her post is "How social media remixes public speaking." You get the point. The nature of speakers and audiences is changing. You've got to recognize it and be ready for it.