Message Board vs Real Time Chat

[ImaNihilist]

I wanted to get some thoughts from you guys about the pros/cons of message boars vs real time chat, and if you've ever used this kind of software in a business setting.

I'm creating a new digital group, and I'm looking at communication software that we can use. Everyone is very tech savvy.

I need to pick one or two platforms that we will use for almost ALL communication. I can't decide if it's better to use a message board application (like the wonderful vBulletin we have here) or something more "real time" like Campfire for HipChat.

I've been looking at the following:

• vBulletin
• phpBB
• IP.Board
• Vanilla Forums
• Campfire
• HipChat
• IRC

I'm actually leaning towards Vanilla Forums, which is a lightweight open source form built in PHP designed around simplicity. I keep thinking that we need something like Campfire to do real time communication, but I'm not sure we actually do. Cost isn't an issue, but I would like to "own" all our communication. If all goes well, we might fork a small FOSS project.

I was thinking about maybe using Vanilla and something like Mumble (an FOSS VoIP client) or IRC, so that when we need to do "real time" we can.

I wanted to get your thoughts about how valuable you think it is to have a real time collaboration environment, of if it's better to have a comms platform with structure like a message board.

If you've ever used a platform like this to get some serious work done, I'd love to hear your thoughts about what you liked and what you didn't.