I'll have some more performance numbers by then, and I'm happy to participate in whatever the group wants to do. But personally, I've never been big on online chats, and I don't see that this one could accomplish anything that wouldn't be better accomplished here on wikitech-l.
Cool. The problem with mailing list discussion is that they can die quickly, for many reasons, which can delay things unnecessarily. I've seen many situations where a mailing list was used to report a serious problem, but the post (in spite of hundreds of members) was ignored.
We all know that the performance issue is one of our most pressing problems right now -- many people can't use the site anymore, and the international Wikipedians are getting a bit irritated. So I think the best way to address this *on time* is to sit down (virtually) and go through an agenda.
Regards,
Erik