It was an interesting turnout at the Social Media Club Tuesday evening. Social Media Club is run by my friends Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells.

Tuesday's theme was introduced by Raines Cohen and the subject was:"Saving the Earth through Social Media: Public Education about the Global Climate Crisis through Blogging and Web Publishing."

Not surprisingly, we barely scratched the surface, which is good because there are many ways to scratch this theme, especially since our tools are so new.

I didn't catch everybody's name but here are some of the web sites associated with the people at Tuesday's event, or recommended by them:

• Kari Daniels and her documentary "Voices of Dissent."
• Raines Cohen
• Greener.com - a green search site.
• Freecycle Changing the World One Gift at a Time
• Podaddies - Dynamic Video Ads
• Yahoo! Answers - How can the human race survive the next hundred years
• Justin.tv
• Tracked in America
• The Digital Tipping Point the culture of freedom in cyberspace
• SOMAcast - South of Market in San Francisco
• mp3death.com
• my-currency knowledge is currency
• Jyte Spread the Cred
• GUBA - Enjoy, upload, and share free videos.
• Webstrategy, Inc

My apologies if I missed anyone. There was lots of great conversation, Chris will post the podcast.

What struck me about the evening was something that I noticed when I first arrived here in 1984--how little debate there is between groups of people. We spend way too much time with people we agree with most of the time.

The culture here rewards agreement but not debate. Americans tend to view debate as a disagreement and therefore it should be avoided. But in the UK, debate and disagreement are considered to be part and parcel of an excellent conversation.

Here, there is a strong tendency to only speak with like-minded people.

I'd love to know how we can use all these wonderful collaborative, social tools to engage in a conversation about global warming that is not parochial. Surely this is an issue that transcends Republican or Democrat labels? How do we get involved in debate rather than grandstanding?