I was in the LCA2016 IRC channel and at LCA2016 in person. I really wish we could have CCC [1] levels of "audience participation" because it allows people to interact with the conference who may not normally be able to attend. The live streaming was really well done but I think there needs to be One True Chat Channel for LCA2017. Maybe that means using Slack or similar and swallowing a bit of FOSS pride for a while.

[1]: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/wiki/Congress_Everywhere and yes, they use IRC. LCA's audience is a bit different