I've thought some about the prior meeting and what I would do differently. At the previous meeting, I had the dubious fortune of being designated a speaker -- which did give me a chance to introduce my pet topics, but had some disadvantages as well -- I lost the ability to chat quietly with people in my row, and I felt compelled to say something even when I had nothing to say. I also noticed that others who were not speakers did not feel like full participants in the event.
As for IRC, I'm attracted to the idea of a free-for-all, but I honestly was not able to follow anything when everyone had gathered together but before the speach controls were imposed -- there were just too many threads at once, and I couldn't find the ones I was following.
Uh... Yes, I think experimenting with new ways to run a virtual meeting is A Good Thing. But... We have a meeting to run. So how about sticking to familiar tools for the actual meeting, so that we can concentrate on the *issues* at hand, and schedule the experimental stuff separately. If we need "rows" and whatever, why not just form a dozen separate IRC channels, one on each sub-issue, and you can join as many or as few as you like at one time. Let's not complicate things too much - we have a war to fight! Julf