Provocative opinion: If you have a few minutes to rub together, please read my speech from the RonCon 2010 conference last week, in which I claim that employee communication is as important to democracy as public education (and go about trying to tell employee communicators what to do about it). I'd be happy to get your reaction.

Urgent fact: Friday is the deadline for entering the E2E Communication Awards, for excellence in the communication discipline no democracy can do without. There's a late deadline of April 9, but you have to pay extra and, even worse, you make the awards chairman's life more difficult. So enter this week!

The good news: Entering E2E is so easy you can do it in the time it would have taken you to read my speech.