I attended a conference in Reno in March where we looked at how organizations communicate and reach out to their customers. No surprises, however, it did generate some ideas and refined others.

Lynne C. Lancaster, co-author of the book When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work spoke at a lunch meeting providing a cute, multimedia, look at various age groups, complete with TV ads that showed how various generations work together to enable organizations to make changes and lead.

While her presentation failed to provide specifics, she did make me think about how we communicate in the future.

It should be no surprise that the incoming crop of workers, Millennials, born after 1980, use a lot of tools to learn about news, trends and ideas. They also seek constant approval.

And to save time, the rest of the generations still tend to use traditional media to find trends and news. The Baby Boomers question authority, while the Traditionalists, those born before the Baby Boomers, hate people to question their authority. But according to Lancaster, both groups still tend to watch the evening news, read the newspaper, while only a few understand how to use aggregators, pull RSS feeds and blog.

The Millennials on the other hand pull RSS feeds and read blogs to find out about their world. They also have no problem sharing with others, through texting, blogging and by word-of-mouth. They want others to like them and they seek their opinion.

Now full circle: Lancaster says all of the generations work together to help each other. Which, led me to pondering and daydreaming, even as Lancaster made the crowd laugh with old Ameritrade commercials.

So if the generations help bridge the gap, through various communication tools, how difficult would it be to use new tools, blogs, et. al., to initiate change? Viral marketing for sure, but I’m talking about initiating social change and not just creating buzz for a product.

With all of the new social networking sites coming of age, mostly used by Millennials, we have an opportunity to “suggest” ideas and allow Millennials to become evangelists and spread the word. Plus they seek feedback, which is perfect for creating a communication loop. Feed the blogs, push out ideas, and they will take on a life of their own.

Simple thinking I realize requiring more thought, but daydreams can’t take up too much time when you’re supposed to be paying attention to the paid speaker.