IRC has been used successfully in the past, and I suspect that twitter might be popular, too. Some people have managed a twitter/facebook melding, even. I was at a conference recently that started up and maintained for several weeks afterward (it may still be going on for all I know) a skype group text chat as a back channel.
AoIR's registered irc channel... still exists. We registered it for IR 6.0 and it is still registered. You can find it on the Freenode network as #aoir-general
What about SecondLife? I am not the most adept SL person on the planet, but I can see how it might be fun to "meet" there while the event is on. There will be a SecondLife pre-conference workshop, and perhaps some of those people would be interested in constructing a virtual conference in SL. I can get architectural drawings, if you want them...
Hmm, there are groups interested in working with this. I'm pretty sure we can use an number of spaces should we desire. I work with Joi Ito in his Joi Lab and his Kula Island in SL, we have one of the big 4 sim theaters designed by Aimee Weber and can have well over 100 avatars in it at once. That's a possibility, but I suspect that groups like Pleides.ca or Metaversality might be interested in doing something at the conference. jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series