1. A presence management system for a contact center comprising: a presence server that accepts, manages, and distributes presence information using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based messages and in conformance with an open standard; a data store communicatively linked to the presence server, wherein the data store contains and stores the presence information, said stored presence information including presence information for each of a plurality of contact center agents, at least one of the contact center agents being an independent contractor, wherein for each agent the stored presence information includes an element indicating at least one expertise of the associated agent; a plurality of watchers each configured to subscribe to the presence information managed by the presence server, wherein each of the watchers corresponds to a unique expertise and wherein each watcher is associated with the presence information for all of the contact center agents of the plurality of contact center agents having the unique expertise to which that watcher corresponds; and a plurality of watcher specific filters, each associated with one of the watchers, said watcher specific filters including configurable parameters for determining which of the associated live agents is to handle a communication requiring the expertise category to which that watcher corresponds, wherein load balancing among the associated live agents is performed by an appropriate one of the watcher specific filters, and wherein the load balancing causes the corresponding watcher to select the at least one independent contractor when a queue wait time for a queue exceeds a preselected threshold.