Perl Mongers Meetings via Google Hangout
This past Thursday we tried something new at Toronto.pm We decided to try having our in-person meeting also available online via Google Hangout. So far all feedback has been positive and it allowed us to have a meeting of 15 people rather than just the 10 who made the trip to our usual location. We had participants from as far as Texas and Alberta as well as some local mongers who weren't able to make it to the location but were still interested in the topic being presented.
We're going to make a few tweaks to the setup in the actual meeting room in order to let the online participants better hear the questions asked in the room and vice versa, but moving forward it looks like we're going to stick with this format and likely publicize the hangouts so that just anyone can check in and participate. At least one of our lightning talks in our coming September meeting will be from a remote participant, which seems like a great way to get access to more speakers than the usual suspects who attend our meetings in person.
If you've toyed with the idea of broadcasting your meetings, this may also be a good solution for your local monger group.
I hack on MetaCPAN, CPAN modules and other fun stuff.
I believe allowing anyone to participate by publicizing the hangout that you mentioned as being planned is actually the very point of organizing an online meeting.