I volunteered to Twitter and live blog the opening keynote because way back in 1996-99, when the Internet was still a novel word, I interviewed six gurus including Williams’ co-author, Don Tapscott (read Digital Dad), for The Civilization of Cyberspace series that appeared in IABC’s Communication World magazine.

It was amazing and gratifying to hear Williams recite all the ways the Internet is transforming business, healthcare, education, government, entertainment … everything … just as the six gurus I interviewed had predicted ten years ago.

"Mass Collaboration is the" is term for the newest driving force of transformation. Williams started with the poster child of mass collaboration, Wikipedia, which now has 70,000 active volunteer contributors and the site has the credibility of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Another example Williams cited was Linux, the free open operating system that rivals Microsoft Windows. Linux is now so pervasive it can be found in such diverse products and services as the Tivo, Motorola phones, VW engines and the New York Stock Exchange, to name a few.

Williams said if you add a profile to Facebook, or upload a picture to Flikr, or comment on a blog, you are one of the programmers of the new “global computer.”

“You’re contributing to the vast tapestry of knowledge.  The fact that this global computer is available to 1.5 billlion people is astounding. The impact of that many people contributing to something like this is unknown and very exciting. Mass collaboration changes everything."

Williams cited examples where people are using the Internet to make decisions based on the people they trust most -- their peers.  Patients are rating their doctors. Curriki is a peer-produced global "edu-learning" community innovating educational curricula.

We have large scale problems and dispersed capabilities, said Williams. "Talent is becoming a liquid commodity. Today, labor doesn’t have to be mobile, just plugged into internet."

This is the age of participatory media, Williams said.  The important shifts are to multimedia and increasingly three-dimensional worlds with more tactile and visual interfaces.  "Your television is increasingly your computer, xbox, mobile phone, portable computer, and it's in the car, in the elevator or gas station. It's the internet of things: any object can be intelligent."

The computer is becoming increasingly irrelevant, according to Williams.  "Mobile fundamentally transforms the way we interact with the internet.  There will be four billion mobile phones by 2010.  Today, 97 percent of Tanzanians say they can access a mobile phone.

"And in 10 or 15 years, the entire library of human knowledge will fit on your phone: 32 million books, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, 100 billion public web pages, all accessible from your cell phone.

"We're going to be browsing the physical world. Snap a picture of a wine bottle and get an instant recommendation if it's good with fish. Snap the cover of a music CD and get an instant ringtone. The opportunities to do marketing and communication in new ways are amazing."

"With wikinomics and mass communication, the whole paradigm of communication has changed. Now the audience and the communication department is just one node and the channels they use are the same.

"All of this will require new mental models for creating and disseminating messages. The path to success is to engage and build new forms of engagement, said Williams. "The challenge for communicators is how to turn the audience into co-creators with you. There is no choice in the matter; it’s only when and how."

Leading companies are starting to rethink talent and how they acquire ideas and innovation. P&G used to have a "Not invented here" syndrome. Around 2000, P&G’s Larry Huston said the company was going to get 50% of its ideas and innovation from outside the company.  They had 9,000 engineers at the time, but figured there were 1.8 million other engineers around the world as good as those. They used the web to harness ad hoc problem solving.  Now P&G engineers and others are rewarded for inventing and commercializing; it doesn’t matter if the product was invented outside or inside.

"Wikis are good place for thinking outloud, breaking down silos," said Williams.  The US Central Intelligence Agency didn’t have effective collaboraton across the 16 agencies that affect security.  It launched IntelliPedia.  For the first time the USIA is thinking topically and horizonatally; 90,000 people are collaborating in new ways.

How will leadership change with the advent of meritocracy?  Williams says part of the role of leadership is to give permission to innovate and change culture.  We have to recast the notion from the all knowing director who formulates the plan, to saying we’re doing together."

Today, it's about unleashing wikinomics in your organization, concluded Williams. "The world is your communications department."