This last week I posted a question at an online forum for people in the public speaking business.

I challenged my colleagues to give me one good reason I should accept a speaking gig an ocean away, when all I was being offered was economy-class travel and a couple of nights in an unremarkable hotel. There was no fee, no honorarium for the talk, itself.

At first, the replies were banal. They wondered if I was a pampered, privileged, pompous guy that didn't have the good sense to grab what seemed to be a mostly-free European trip.

But when I clarified my chief challenge as, "How can I possibly justify saying yes?" the contributions were considerably improved.

And while those that logged in didn't provide any breakthrough thoughts, their assistance helped me to have one or two on my own, including a nascent concept for developing a new type of international speaking agency.

I learned something very important from this three or four day colloquium. Social networking may miss the mark entirely as a business-building bourse. It may never pay off in terms of developing great, new contacts, either.

But it can help us to tap hundreds if not thousands of years of CURRENT experience with a a good question or two and a few clicks.

For instance, judging from the photos of those in my discussion group, I'd say each one had more than twenty years of professional experience that he brought to the topic.

About eight main contributors represented close to 200 years of background and experiences in our interaction. If I prolonged the discussion, this could result in a thousand years or more of collective wisdom weighing in on the theme.

Where could you buy such input, and most important, such discernment?

"What would you do?" is a key question that has been reserved mostly for our wisest friends, co-workers, and family members. But they do not have the focus or the emotional distance to give the type of feedback that can really make a big difference in a short time.

For that, we have social networking to thank.