Dave Taylor gave the keynote at the opening of the Thin Air Summit. And what an opening!

He’s a pioneer in the use of the Internet, going back to the ’80s. With that experience comes a wise perspective. I found Dave’s keynote to be smart, compassionate, and best of all, a much needed viewpoint about how technology is impacting us as a society and a culture. You don’t get that from the average geek.

Some key points from his talk, "Finding a Voice: The Evolution of Personal Media Through History":

• All of us are publishers. Dave asked the room how many were bloggers, podcasters, vloggers (video podcasters), on Twitter, on Facebook. Lots of hands raised, which you would expect in this kind of crowd. The point is that there are multiple avenues for getting your point of view out in the world. This is one of the underpinnings of A Bigger Voice–you don’t need to go through gatekeepers (e.g., publishers, programmers for radio or television shows) to have a bigger voice in the world.
• We are story-tellers. Dave talked about how human beings have the desire to tell stories. His presentation was a great example of this, telling us about graffiti from 79AD in Pompeii and bloggers jailed in oppressive regimes, to illustrate his points about the drive and dangers of having a voice. Stories stick. Stories capture our imagination. It’s why A Bigger Voice emphasizes telling your story of why you are passionate about your cause, how you’ve come to do the work that you doing.
• Each of us represents more people with similar ideas. We not only have the ability to have a voice, we can influence others as well. I loved this point from Dave as it goes to the core of a principle from A Bigger Voice: One individual can start a community.
• The human desire for expression is strong. People are willing to risk being jailed, tortured, and killed to be heard.  Citing examples like Anne Frank, Thomas Paine and places where freedom of speech is non-existent, Dave made the case for why so many of us are lucky to have open disagreement and heated discussions, publicly.
• Divergent voices are the sign of a healthy system. Yes! Yes! and Yes!  It’s the secret to what A Bigger Voice calls a "vibrant community." Corollary point: One person starts the conversation and then someone else riffs off of it. You can’t control this, nor do you want to. Any blogger who has written a provocative post and seen comments come pouring in knows this, in spades.
  Dave summed this up nicely:
  • More Voices = Less Control
  • Less Voices = Death of Democracy
• Everyone’s a media channel. We are the new citizen journalist. This goes to points made in the Long Tail. And the idea that bottom-up change is possible, now more than ever.
• With power comes responsibility. Think before talking. I think often at the root of flaming, talking without thinking about the ramifications, and just silly stuff is self-righteousness. It’s why the personal development part of this journey is so important. We need to be in service to something other than our ego.

I’m usually much more measured in blogging about my experiences–waiting a few days after I’ve had a chance to digest and process. And I think I’m getting into the spirit of social media–which is about connecting to many and sharing in real time.

Jeremiah Owyang will give a keynote this morning, in less than an hour. I’ll try to blog about what I learn from his talk soon….