Oy, I dunno. I actually use an IRC gateway for XMPP group chats because irssi does so well for the medium. My team at work uses an IRC channel for adhoc group conversations, and that's the only IRC channel most of us are in. I also have a separate irssi open to freenode, but that's unusual for my team, and the freenode irssi is tucked in a corner where I see it only during interrupts anyway.