Chat Night

[Chicubswally]

What would everyone think of a Chat Night?
Here are some thoughts:

We could hold one a month, on say the second Wednesday at 8:00 pm CT. Some people will make it each month and some will not, but if we set a schedule date and time, people may add this to their calendars.

We could have a preset topic for a certain amount of time then open it up to general discussion. The topic could be mediated by a member or two each session with 'hosts' trading off each month. For example, we could have a discussion on 'My First Crested Gecko' and Monte could host this session (your welcome for a half hour or so and maybe tag team with another member. Then the discussion could be opened up for Q&A or just general discussion. The host could come with web page references for everyone to 'take home and study', etc. These topics could range from beginner (crested/leo FAQ, enclosure setup) to intermediate (field studies, glass vs. screen enclosures) to advanced (nutrition/vitamin supplementation, disease control).

If we asked the chat attendees to keep their questions relevant to the topic, we could even save, format, and post these Chat Night sessions to another forum location for later reference.

The first question would be whether Allen can think of any issue with this. Would this take away from the features of the forum itself, is there bandwidth in the chat feature, etc.? The second question would be if we had volunteers to host 11 or 12 Chat Night session (one each). I would not mind coordinating the arrangements but we would need 'speakers'.

I don't think this is a radical idea by any means as other forums have had similar functions. What I would hope is that this might bring together the group in an interactive manner to allow for the sharing of ideas, comments, and concerns about our gecko hobbies.

Any ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated!

[Andrew Gilpin]

Wally, we tried it a couple of different times, but not many people seemed to show up. We had Randy May do a photography chat, but the problem came when too much bandwidth was being used up, and people kept randomly getting kicked off.
Despite the above, I think it would be a really great thing to try to get more use out of. Also, the great thing about our chatroom feature is you can make your own rooms, private, or public. So if you find someone you'd like to talk to about a different subject, it's no problem! Create your own room, with public access, or you can PM the person a password to get into the chat. I think this would certainly cut back on a lot of the off topic subjects that many times occur during other chats.