Did you know chat rooms are still a thing? They didn't die with AOL. IRC has been around since before the world wide web. IRC has been and continues to be popular for technical communities. There are channels for many frameworks, languages, and conferences.
That Conference's offical channel is #ThatConference on the FreeNode Network. To join us, just go here: https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net/thatconference/, type in a nick and hit start.
IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. IRC is an open standard. No one person or company "owns" it. An IRC network is a decentralised cluster of servers. Servers are typically disturbed around the world. IRC clients connects to one of the servers in the cluster and joins channels (chat rooms) to communicate. Users send messages to each other in channels, send private messages to others users, send files, and create new channels.