I'm going to say something along the lines of what Lyle (Pezcat) has been saying. Trying to hold general meetings in more than one place simultaneously simply undermines the whole point of the general meeting. As has been pointed out, trying to coordinate two distant meetings is difficult, that's why we ask everyone to meet in one place once a month.
I've seen it attempted with cellphones and there is just no practical way to include distant observers in a physical meeting, not unless the point of the meeting is to coordinate with the distant observer, ie with those business conference call speaker things or TV/camera setups that some classrooms use. I also see it as a really huge bear to try to coordinate with several people in a chatroom with one person providing the interface between physical presence and online chatroom. Will that person be providing minutes on-the-spot? Will that person also have to make sure everyone is connected? Will that person also be expected to relay information from the chatroom "attendees"? Will that person be expected to provide different clarifications to several people at once? I don't know how it would work.
But please don't think that the general meetings are the only meetings you should be attending or holding - they are not. We want the departments to be having more meetings more frequently than the monthly general meetings. That's why they're called general meetings. Departments should be doing their own planning and coordination in order to have updates for the other departments and the staff as a whole when the next general meeting comes around.
For example, the executives try to meet online on a weekly basis, and the only medium used is the chatroom, so there's no need to attempt an interface such as is being suggested. The chatroom meetings could be done within the departments who have people in several different cities, as long as everyone is able to participate online and the whole meeting is conducted in the one medium/location, and probably as long as the number of participants is not too large. Furthermore, we also have departmental staff forums available that no one ever uses. The only way those are going to work is if everyone on staff is checking in regularly to provide input and working to help the project/person, sometimes whether solicited or not. But it falls apart and dies if we never check the forums, and don't respond to the stuff that relates to us. There are a LOT of unanswered questions and requests here because the responsible parties are not answering them.
Basically, I just want to encourage everyone to use the forums more often and meet more often, however you can, even if it's to hang out on a rainy Saturday and order pizza and watch anime (that's what they call team-building!)
