Sorry if this has already been done but. A Hubski IRC has been setup at irc.gamesurge.net #hubski.
If you're an administrator of this website (founder/co-founder) come in and I'll pass you the director status/channel registration and step down. Just thought it would be nice to get everyone who is active together for potentially interesting conversations or to simply idle until you have something to say.
Paraphasing / adding on a short conversation I had with Cortez on this matter: I'm interested in how mk feels about the spreading of sharing and subsequent conversation onto IRC (Or the recently created Steam Group and Google+ community ), since they might dilute the content away from the main website. Additionally, while IRC channels tend to work the number of active users is somewhere under twenty or so, every other big website's channel I've ever sat in has just been either spam or just too much volume for the medium to properly handle. I don't have massive opinions on the matter either way, but perhaps this is a discussion that should be had as these spin-offs pop up?
I highly doubt some IRC chatter will "dilute the content away from the main website." If my experience has shown me anything, such alternate ties only serve to make the community closer, and encourages bonds of friendship between members. That's half the point of Hubski, isn't it? To meet new friends with similar interests?
I don't see IRC as much different from offline Hubski meetups. My goal isn't to get everyone here and keep them here as long as possible. :) I just want Hubski to do Hubski well. Also, just like offline meetups, there's probably exchanges that can best occur elsewhere that could improve the community overall.
Not just for OSS: it's also widely used (with the knowledge and acceptance of the admins by several LUGs, the W3, various Wikimedia projects, community wireless groups, and so on. Beyond that "official" list, it's also well-used by other groups for all kinds of purposes: for example, I volunteer with a non-profit which has used a Freenode channel for several years, but we're definitely not an OSS project! OSS certainly was what freenode was designed for, but they seem more than happy to support other kinds of communities too.