I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a thought leader in a time where the tools to deliver thoughts globally are easier to use and more available than at any time in human history.

Blogs, podcasts, videos, voice over Internet solutions, free or cheap software for Web sites, forums and commerce, social networks are but a few of the tools available to anyone with a penchant for getting their opinions out into the world. Couple these Internet-centric methods with the more affordable and easy-to-use tools like camcorders, smartphones, audio creation software and hardware — and ever increasing bandwidth — and you have a perfect storm of communication methods that is perfect for thought leaders to deliver big thoughts and facilitate the conversation.

What’s missing? Aggregators of thought leaders coupled with community networks. Corante is one organization that has done a fine job of pulling together thought leaders into one core group around subject categories. Another fine one is ManyWorlds. These and others do not, however, facilitate the conversation in my opinion. They’re set as experts or thought leaders somehow above us who read them.

But here’s my problem: I don’t believe that experts exist. For the same reason unconferences (read Dave Winer’s take on them) have exploded on to the scene and are beginning to disrupt the conference-as-a-huge-revenue-generator,. Most conferences always purport to have ‘experts’ up pontificating about some subject to a passive audience…but we’re no longer passive and the best ideas come from conversation. By design, unconferences are all about participants and conversation…not so-called experts delivering yet another Powerpoint slide deck and joking about “I only have 400 slides” with a courtesy laugh from the audience.

Oliver Schwabe has one of the best posts about this topic I’ve read in some time entitled, The guru is dead. Long live the network:

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