How can I start a Verbal Community Discussion in Real Time?

With many years of engineering experience, I am now a consultant and educator. I would like to expand my work with new companies and develop relationships around the world where others might collaborate with me.

While websites, emails and blogs are fine, I want to know if there is some sort of internet network where people can discuss their needs and share their knowledge with others. It would be like a classroom, a club or maybe something like an online pub where people can talk to each other real-time. Maybe people could post messages all the time but there would be an active discussion at some particular time (i.e. 1200GMT) every Tuesday.

Is there an existing resource for such activity? Is this something that Skype offers? Or one of the instant messaging systems?

Many thanks,

Walter