I've spoken now at some length with the author of the Zoom! idea and he is OK with coupling Zoom! w/ VoH.

I've spoken now at some length with the author of the Zoom! idea and he is OK with coupling Zoom! with Voices of Humanity as alternate modes of accessing a single database of participants and the items they have posted. 

The big difference is that Zoom! would not deal with groups - it would be one large forum but with the ability to change scale geographically while being able to select by demographic of those who post the items and perhaps in other dimensions as well.

The very cool thing is that public messages posted in Voices of Humanity would be accessible in Zoom!  So if we go for Zoom! we are not giving up on VoH.