I found the jabber logs helped me decide when to move between sessions, when micro-timing of schedules wasn't apparent and I had to be in 'both' sessions. I found sidebar conversations carried the subjective information you missed. I don't think we can yet intuit the consensus of the room to put that into jabber in the wide, one mans bozo is another mans guru and all that... I think you are right to characterize the recordings as 'being there with sanity checks' -The jabber stuff was a way I found I could meet two goals: 1) let other people know whats going on in the room 2) compile the data which the WG chair wanted as a log of the session tending towards the official minutes On the whole, I liked having the jabber even if the value is moot. Writing a jabber log is very painful. RSI returns! cheers -george