I hear ya, John … but being perhaps one of (if not t-h-e) slowest of the current churners, I appreciate Caroline’s concerns. You’re very correct in noting, though, that past experiences shape very strongly what we perceive to be future options.
Let’s face it … our last cafe was pretty much all over the place, and if don’t find ourselves particularly time-constrained (e.g., in post-session forums online), our cafe sessions tend to get very all over the place. The main participants are, well, pretty all-over-the-place kind of people. Hell, in the couple of times that I was able to spring Marco from solitary confinement, as you so aptly put it, we started with a spontaneous question but never ended up at an answer to that one. One of the nicest features of our cafe sessions is that they aren’t designed. In fact, I don’t really like to refer to them as “sessions”, they’re more like “happenings”, but who around here these days even know what those were?
Other get-togethers, like those surrounding Caroline’s Trumpocalypse series, had a very different dynamic about them, and after watching the recordings, even someone as slow as me was able to put in a thought or two as well. If you figure (and these are merely good old online-experience stats I’m throwing out here) that only about 10% participate while 90% lurk, then there’s a whole lot of potential “out there” for groups of all kinds, because we can only imagine what they are from things they post somewhere on the platform, and I have by no stretch of the imagination be able to explore vast areas of this platform (after all, the cafe churners have been keeping me pretty busy lately 
).
What I’m sort of hoping (and as you know, we curmudgeons try to stay low-key when hope starts hopping around) is that others on the platform will drop in, see that, well, just about anything is possible here and be inspired to do their own thing. I mean Doug has been gently but firmly pushing his human-potential thought experiment, Marco has broached the subject with Zacharay about a writer’s workshop (which has already generated positive response), and if you’re up for heavy doses of reading and focused thrashing around there, are the collective readings that we’ve done and are thinking about doing. There are things happening to be sure, and as far as I’m concerned, more than I can keep up with (comes with old age, probably).
As you have so often reminded us, groups develop their own dynamics, so when there is a big enough need for a slower-paced, more focused kind of group, I feel very certain that it will form. The beauty of the InfiniteConversations platform is that nobody’s ever telling anyone not-to. By the same token, I don’t think anyone’s going to get up and just say, “let’s do …” either.
What would we like to have our norms & actions be on such a matter? Of course leave it to me to always circle it back to 
) The sine qua non for me is engagement, because this gives us something to work with. Without currents of human exchange and felt presence, the project would remain merely abstract and mental.