Collaboration cafés

Chris Macrae throws out sparky ideas like a human catherine wheel, and he is currently promoting the idea of helping make London a collaboration capital by connecting two of its great resources - influential visitors and local enthusiasts.
Chris's idea is to offer top people in their field, who are coming to London to speak at conferences, the opportunity to meet 10 people at an informal cafe event for an hour or so.
The visitor would get the chance to pick up some local context (which could be useful for their conference performance), and promote their ideas in a way likely to be more effective than a burst of Powerpoint. It would add some extra humanity to what might otherwise be Yet Another Conference Trip.
A group of us met with Chris the other day to take the idea forward, and Margaret Gold has set up a Collaboration Cafe club on the excellent ecademy social networking system.
Chris is one of those people with great networks, great ideas, and no desire to claim 'ownership' of them..... so I expect his sparks to set off a few fires around the landscape. Campfires, not bush fires, of course.