A group of the regulars over at the Immortality Institute forums - a place where a number of advocates and activists for healthy life extension gather to swap notes and plan next steps - are planning a regular voice chat event. The first will be held on March 1st to establish the level of interest and iron out the bugs:

Ok, so at night during the week seems like the best time. I am going to go ahead and make it for Thursday, March 1st at 10 pm (22:00) EST (in the US: 9 Central, 8 Mountain, 7 Western). It should last about 30 minutes to an hour, give or take a little.

Here is the calculation for the time it will be in different parts of the world at 10pm (22:00) EST March 1st:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=3&day=1&year=2007&hour=22&min=0&sec=0&p1=25

...

It will be a Skypecast (info on Skypecasts below), and here is the page for it (I scheduled it):
https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=470647

Hopefully it is a success!

You might want to take a brief look at the way in which Skypecasts work before diving in:

You really have to try it to see, but basically there are 3 levels of people: 1) those with permission to speak, 2) those waiting to speak, and 3) those just listening.

When you first sign in, you are in the group that is just listening (generally the largest group), and you click the "request to talk" button at the top when you want to talk, which moves you into group 2. The moderator can allow anyone to talk, bump someone from speaking ability down to regular, or bump someone from the room completely if they are being bad.

It is really very easy, and once you are in there for about 15 seconds you will realize how it works.

Post to the discussion thread if you have suggestions on procedure, specific topics, timing going forward, or any other thoughts.

Technorati tags: life extension, skypecast