Hi Montana Drupalistas!
IRC is a venerable Internet protocol for real-time text-based communications. Essentially, chatrooms. Ages before Skype, AIM, etc people were using IRC to chat about thousands of topics, and IRC remains very popular today, especially among geeks.
I have created an IRC channel for the use of our local Montana Programmers group, and I think we should use it for Drupal Montana as well. We can help each other with questions/answers, say hi, and alleviate the isolation of working alone for us home-office folks. It's like a virtual water cooler.
If you already know how to use IRC, just join the #mtprogrammers channel on the Freenode network (irc.freenode.net).
If you need help getting started with IRC, I've provided complete instructions here:
http://www.meetup.com/Montana-Programmers/messages/boards/thread/10053832
If you need any help, just let me know! Hope to see you in the channel…
P.S. The global Drupal community makes heavy use of IRC to stay connected. The Drupal IRC channels are a great way to ask/answer questions, coordinate with Drupal friends in far-flung locales, etc: http://drupal.org/irc