He's suggesting a multimedia conferencing solution to improve communication. Which makes sense, considering there is the analog of the academic conference seminar with matching IRC room where attendees discuss and lampoon the speaker. I wonder if you could implement this directly via VoIP services? SIP (or should I say SIMPLE) in theory supports a form of inline chatting, provided the end client supports it. I suppose if you were really pushing for it, force the conference participants to use SIP clients exclusively, cutting out those expensive analog teleconference support services since all the audio is VoIP.