i think the pentultimate thing to do would be to setup a Jabber server. it has IM, conferencing (groupchat), publish/subscribe and tons of other features in the works. there's at least one Perl/Tk client Jarl. and it's relatively easy to write Bots/Components/XML-RPC types of applications.

for a simple idea of Jabber, think ICQ, IRC, AIM, MSN and the like but instead of some proprietary transport everything in Jabber is XML and Open.

take a look at the Jabber site and browse the last month or so of the jdev mailing list for a good idea of what they're trying to put together. it's pretty neat, and i'm not even an XML fan.

i might actually be able to setup a server. i'm at a .edu so it's not a problem of bandwith as much as will my old CPU handle the load and can i justify having the server. i'm betting i could get away with it if the experience could lead to a 15 minute presentation at some conference or another or lead to a rollout of internal IM.