I actually enjoy real-time meetings, as long as a few conditions are met:

1. A concise, realistic agenda is distributed to all attendees beforehand, and actually followed 2. A single person takes concise notes, with a heavy focus on action items and official decisions; the notes are distributed promptly at the end of the meeting (or better yet, real-time via a shared document) 3. Each action item is given a single assignee and realistic deadline

Your chat example seems like it could be solved with a 5-minute screenshare.