I had a huge post written up, then bam. Locks up.
Alright;
There are few downsides to this idea. Time will have to be invested, and it will build community, but, of course, sometimes, with community, comes DRAMA. But, we've managed to remain professional, so there should be no real problems with that.
IRC;
www.mirc.com is a client I use. At the moment, it may or may not need cracking after the 30 day period is up. Those of use who feel that MIRC is worthwhile, but not worth going out of our way for find ways around this.
Undernet;
As per Kamatz's suggestion, you'll want to join irc.undernet.org. Select any of the servers, and give it a few tries (All the servers are linked, sending information to one another, thus, you achieve the possibility for massive channels of 1000+ people on them, some from foreign countries. Basic stuff). I will idle there under the nickname CM2k (I can be reached by using /msg (insert nickname here) (type message here), as well as in the channel #snipercentral. However, I was there for 5 minutes, and I received a completely anonymous message asking me if I liked smoking (A bot, spamming ads pretty well. The chat equivalent of spam). This will show you the basics of channel registration;
http://mirchelp.nexuswebs.net/undernet.html . It takes 10 regular users, I am guessing visiting once a day, to get a channel registered. If you need help, join the channel #help to get it (/join (insert channel nick name here, always has a # in front of it) or /j)
My suggestion;
I personally know the owners of the servers on irc.xelium.net . Xelium is a web design company. I like the services better (In Undernets case, you register a nickname which you associate with yourself whenever you log on, but you make no claims to the nickname. In Xelium's case, you register the nickname, and can kill (read; kick off the network) any users using this name of you desire. Inactive names unregister themselves in both cases), and there is no minimum traffic needed to register a channel (Registering a channel lets you excersize control over it. In Undernet's case, whoever gets into the channel first from empty, would be given complete access to the channel. When the channel empties out (No users present), it resets back to an empty state. That's what it would be like until we picked up 10 regular users. In Xelium's case, you can register the channel immediately, and have all the control and access over the channel you want).
Downside is, the users are mostly Anime and VGM (Video Game Music) fans, in addition to the fact that the network is small (Small is kind of a subjective word. It has 700 regular users. Compared to networks like undernet, it's small. But compared to other networks, much bigger). However, I noticed that #support on xelium (Help channel pretty well) had more users present than #help on undernet, in addition to the fact that more operators (People running the IRC network and servers) were present. Website is
http://network.xelium.net/ . And unless you drag in over 400 users, you are unlikely to ever max out their servers. I can be reached here under the nick CM2k as well as in the channel #snipercentral I guess.
There are other networks as well, but like countries of the world, no one has experience in all of them.