(Originally published at Greater Democracy.)

Over on Full Circle Online Interaction Blog, Nancy White asks, “How should we select our Keynote speakers?” She points to this blog post where Andrew observes, “Sitting in conferences I have often looked around at the audience and thought about the incredible opportunity for discovery which lies within”.

When I first read these posts, I thought of conferences I’ve been to where the keynote speaker or the panelists are sitting in front of a large screen with an online chat behind them. There have been great discussions that have taken place in such chats. Take a look at the Personal Democracy Forum Backchat for a good example.

My thought is that the best Keynote speakers, and for that matter the best leaders of any sort are likely to be those that can work well with a public backchat going on.

Is there a generational shift going on that make people more interested in a dialog with speakers and leaders? Is it a result of changes in technology? How does this fit in with the current interest in ‘framing’? Are we seeing people get tired of a father that knows best? Are people starting to question this father image?

Staying with the framing images for a moment, I’ve commented before about how the Jon Stewart comes across more as the sassy teenager challenging the father images than as a father image himself. Perhaps the same is playing out in the current brouhaha about Anderson Cooper (sassy teenager) replacing Aaron Brown (authoritative father figure).

How does this relate to the political scene? To put it back into the language of Greater Democracy, are we seeing more of a focus post-broadcast leadership where we move beyond the sound-byte back to meaningful dialog? I hope so. I hope to attend more conferences with a backchat going on and keynote speakers that can interact well with that. I hope to work for political candidates that can engage in a meaningful dialog through retail politics and through blogs. But then again, maybe I’m still just a sassy teenager.