"virtual connect-a-thon"

With regard to a discussion of MHTML testing, 
 Einar Stefferud wrote:

> Should we consider organizing some kind of virtual
> connect-a-thon over the Internet?

and Jamie Zawinski replied:

> That's worked nicely for S/MIME.  The end result was a chart of
> products known to interoperate with each other.  (Of course, you
> need more than two participants for it to make sense...)

Many folks are interested in organizing a "virtual connect-a-thon" for
HTTP/1.1. Do you have any pointers to people who have run such a thing?

Guidelines, anecdotes, descriptions of actual events, etc. would be
useful. It's easy to speculate, but a little history would help.

Larry