Join opinion writers and community members from Seattle, Kansas City and Florida’s Atlantic Coast as they engage in a cross-continent discussion of President Obama’s State of the Union Address Wednesday.

Follow and participate on Twitter using the hashtag #OPEDSOTU in your tweets, or join the conversation on seattletimes.com. The speech starts at 6 p.m. Pacific time.

The Twitter conversation is a partnership between opinion pages of the Seattle Times, the Kansas City Star and the Scripps Treasure Coast newspapers. We’re hoping to make this an open discussion in each community that will represent viewpoints across the political spectrum. On the Web site, comments will be moderated.

Participants will be a mix of editorial writers and community members from politically blue Seattle to purple Missouri to the Florida's politically red Treasure Coast on the Atlantic. Expect more details about participants early next week.

Here are summaries of the three communities.

Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers serves the central Atlantic Coast of Florida largely known for spring training, citrus, fishing, retirees and businessmen from colder climates who would rather wear flip-flops than a three-piece suit. Two of the three main Treasure Coast counties are overwhelmingly conservative. Residents from Jupiter to north of Vero Beach suffer in an economy that has had among the highest foreclosure rates in Florida and unemployment rates of about 14 percent.

The Kansas City Star is in the heart of the Heartland, an area best known for jazz and barbecue, with red and blue voters in nearly equal numbers.  Missouri, among the nation's top bellwether states, is represented in the U.S. Senate by Republican Kit Bond and Democrat Claire McCaskill.  Just west is Kansas, a traditional Republican stronghold, even though the last elected governor, Kathleen Sebelius, is a Democrat now serving as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Kansas City Star has readers in both states. Take the pulse of the heartland here on Jan. 27

The Seattle Times, independently owned, is the largest daily newspaper in Washington, the most trade-dependent state in the nation that is home to Microsoft and Boeing and diverse agriculture industry. The state lately is decidedly blue, especially around Seattle, with a serious independent streak - usually one-third of voters identify as independents. Washington's governor and both U.S. senators are Democratic women, and the state's voters in November became the first in the nation to affirm by ballot an expansion of domestic partnership rights ­- the "Everything but Marriage" law.