Very interesting developments, thanks gjhiggins!
Now if we decide to hard fork: It's true what rfcdejong says, it could weaken the network. It would be nice to have some kind of "census" of active slimcoin users, or even better, to have an own forum to coordinate the protocol switch. Well, at least we have a reddit, it's pretty inactive but could be used for these cases:
http://www.reddit.com/r/slimcoin/ I've seen at least some recent post have been made ... things are getting better.
I am a bit delayed with my little "PoB report" project but expect to launch it next week. Will announce it here and at Reddit.
A forum would be good but I bet most people would look here first for any important updates.