So, why am I discussing this in March? Because twice a year, the folks at The Office of Letters and Light also run an event called Camp NaNoWriMo, once in April, once in July. The biggest specific difference between Camp NaNo and NaNoWriMo is the rigidity. During Camp, you can set a personal word count goal between 10,000 and 100,000 words. You can also choose to write short stories, or a script (a hold over I believe from the now defunct Script Frenzy), or you can take that time to revise a previously written story/script/manuscript.
Something else that I really like about it, and that I need to research a little better to be completely honest, is that instead of simply being divided into geographic regions, during Camp NaNoWriMo you're divided into 11 person cabins. This can be random, or you can set some parameters for what type of writers you'd like to 'bunk' with, or you can create your own private cabin for specific friends. The benefit of the cabins is that you have someone to commiserate with as time goes on, but the website also has some graphs/stats on word count that are neat to follow. There's also a word count verification at the end of the event - but that's used more as a vanity sticker than anything if you plan on sticking around the website (it tracks which events you've participated in, whether you've won or not, etc).
So I was thinking about maybe in July we could all share a cabin? Cabins can be for up to 11 people and as far as I know it is otherwise private.
If you'd rather, we can also do it here on the forums: a thread, a set period of time, and those participating listed at the top of the thread with their writing goals/genre etc. just as you might see on NaNo's template. I can even make some awesome graphs in excel Actually...probably a google spreadsheet but whatever.
If anyone's interested, let me know how you'd like to do it, what you're interested in writing, how much you want to write, how long you want the event to last/when you want the event (if you don't want to use Camp NaNo's website).