It's been kind of a tradition during some major sporting events and other global things that I've set up a skype chat room and invited people to drop in. They've been a lot of fun in the past, and in one case has evolved into a 4+ year old continuous conversation.

Remember: People will be joining (I hope) from all kinds of sources. Friends, family, yellowsphere, facebook, G+, and twitter, and other extended contact groups. Be excellent to each other and it will go well.

Why Skype? It has some really critical advantages over many other tools.

1. As long as at least one person is still in the room and logged into skype, the chat is active and persists.
2. You can be logged in to skype and to this chat room from several devices at onces (pc, laptop, cellphone, tablet, etc.)
3. You can ignore the room and pop in whenever you want, and get caught up on back messages or ignore them.
4. It's cross platform, cross device, and works well through most firewalls.

Some tips -- I strongly recommend you read through these before joining:

Turn off Notifications: Once you join, by default it will bug you ever time someone types. That makes ignoring the chat room very difficult when you don't have time to participate. Turn this off. From in the chat room, pull down the "Conversation" menu and select "Notification Settings". Most people turn them off entirely or set it to only notify when their name is mentioned. *Note that you may have to set your notifications on each device or PC you use to sign in to Skype.

Ignore the Chat: When you're busy, just close the window and ignore the chat. When you want to participate, just open it chat from your "Recent" tab in Skype and scroll to the most current message.

Don't try to keep up: When you come back after ignoring the chat, don't bother wading through all the back messages. Just join back in. You wouldn't walk into a pub and expect to catch up with everything said since you'd last been there.

We may all be watching different things: Depending on time zone, geographic location, and carrier, we may be seeing several different things as we watch the olympics. Talk about what you want. recommend things. Have fun.

Don't be abuse the chat: Have fun, invite people, talk. Don't monopolize the chat or being insulting. If enough people think you're being difficult, we can use the ban-hammer and give you the boot.

NSFW is OK and Expected: Don't participate at work if you'll get in trouble for bad language or topics.

If you've read the guidelines above and want to join either Click This Link or send me a skype message and ask for an invitation. My skype address is "AndrewJayPollack".

* I'll probably start paying attention to the chat room this evening when NBC is doing the Opening Ceremony (on tape delay). Give the room a day or so to start filling up with people. It should be fun.