Yesterday, Skye Jethani wrote a post critical of how Leadership Network was driving publicity for THE NINES conference. The "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" poll raking Christian leaders struck him as distasteful and he asked his friends at Leadership Network to reconsider the site. Dave Travis, managing director of Leadership Network, spoke with Skye and explained their thinking behind the use of the "crowd source" poll. Travis has written a response to the objections on his blog, and we've excerpted a section here. Read Dave Travis' entire post at Learnings @ Leadership Network.

A few weeks ago a new web site technology went live that allows you to post a list to get opinions. Todd Rhodes (Leadership Network's digital guru) decided to try it to stir up some interest in THE NINES.

We seeded the list with 20-25 names and encouraged folks to add to the list.

We did this to get some suggestions on who we might need to invite to speak this year. We knew that via social media connections we would ...