I think that the seminar and/or salon model works quite well.
There were several postgrad classes where everyone just hashed
ideas around, left envigorated, and started churing out concepts
and code that was shared on the class-lists. Granted, I've seen
similar things on the 'open net' but, somehow, not ones as focused
or rich in results (as opposed to blather). That weekly two-hour
f2f with 'the team' made some intagable difference.
Oook