I’m going to Phoenix with an explicit goal of building support for better virtual communities within AAUW. I believe that there are groups that care about specific areas (STEM, public policy, etc., etc.) that could be much stronger if they had a way to connect with each other. I posted at discuss.aauw.org to try to find others interested.

I’m a fan of the software that underlies the online communities at NTEN: groups.nten.org. Ad hoc groups are easy to create and manage, there’s integration with e-mail lists, groups can be public or “private”. What other requirements would you put on this kind of system?
See also this list in the NTEN forums of other online communities.