Fascinating stuff happening. Sunday night I posted about the Derek Webb concert Gretchen and I attended that night. I also cross-posted that message to the discussion boards at derekwebb.com. Several others who were at the concert contributed to the dialogue, and that thread has now garnered 1346 views and 74 replies.

Things had gotten sufficiently heated up on the board by yesterday that Derek himself posted a response. And late last night the pastor who spoke that night posted a response as well.

A few years ago those of us who were at the concert would have consumed the show and maybe each talked about it with some friends for a couple days after that in a bunch of small, unrelated discussions. And that would have been the end of it. Derek wouldn’t have any real idea about the conversations going on, the pastor wouldn’t know about it, and each concert attendee wouldn’t really know what everybody else thought about it.

But now with the internet we were all able to assemble and have dialogue.

In other ain’t-the-internet-cool news, the planning board for the emergent convention are using an open-source or open-space model to do the planning for next year’s conferences. Which means again that consumers are turning into producers. Instead of just attending the conference and giving post-mortem feedback, those interested can play a role in the planning process. Some good conversations are already happening there.