I also have no doubt one could do a 1000 person remote meeting.
That being said, I've tried to do remote attendence at meetings
both where there is a small timezone offset and a large timezone
offset. The small timezone offset "works" but in no way replaces
face to face meetings. The large timezone offset only works if you
have 1 or 2 working groups to want to attend.
Face to face forces attendees to be mostly in sync with respect to
the timezone. BA was a 10 hour shift for me but it was do able.
--
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: marka(_at_)isc(_dot_)org