Put 400 big thinkers in one room and there’s bound to be talk. Gabbing and nattering, to be sure, but also dialogue, parleys, and powwows. Definitely some hearty discourse and discussion. Probably even a little bombast and braggadocio. So what’s with the reticence beyond those walls?

Every year at the Natural Hazards Workshop, one issue arises again and again—the need to break ideas free of the academic, political, or industry silos holding them incommunicado. The 35th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop was no exception.

While calls for increased communication usually work their way into sessions on various topics in numerous ways, the matter was brought front and center early in the Workshop by our first keynote speaker, New York Times journalist Andrew Revkin.

A day earlier, Revkin had posted an article on his Dot Earth blog detailing outrageous advice given to members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by its chairman—keep a distance from the media. That, along with a backgrounder listing words to avoid using if a scientist were to speak to the media (including uncertainty and risk), provided a good jumping off point for discussions about the need to share information, how we now communicate, and who ultimately has the authority—and responsibility—to speak.

“This is the 21st Century” Revkin said. “Anyone trying to shrink away from the media; that’s not the right reflex.”

But for many, keeping quiet is a reflex, often out of fear of being misrepresented. The problem is that we live in an age of a constant information hum, so refusal to speak doesn’t mean there will be silence, it only means there will be conversation with one less learned voice. Revkin likened the phenomenon to a buffet of choices where consumers hungry for information gorged themselves on whatever noshes looked tasty versus the “information comfort food” dished out in the past.

When it comes to such smorgasbords, many don’t stop to think who’s bringing the food to the table—and sometimes it’s hard to tell. One such instance that Revkin highlighted was the Deepwater Horizon Response site, introduced within days of the first oil spilled in the Gulf. While the site showed the government’s ability to provide the type of information flow that the public demands, it blurred the line between information provided by federal sources and that from BP.

On its face, the new information free-for-all seems to provide more reasons to shy away from communicating than it does for participation, but it also provides opportunities. For those that want to speak their piece, there are blogs, Twitter, personal websites, on-demand publishing and a number of other ways to speak directly to the public. And as Revkin pointed out (via the Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009 report), the public is more likely to trust expert voices than the media—at least on the topic of climate change.

Whether the topic is climate change, or community preparedness, or any of the hundreds of others linked to hazards or disaster, perhaps the top reason to be communicative is because it’s why we do the work. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, knowledge that isn’t communicated doesn’t make a sound.