Agreed Dan and Emily, just having an easy way to participate and be heard, and perhaps be known in the local community would be a fantastic start, and if there were a way for the person to connect to others to continue the dialogue afterwards even better.  The tangible value then might be the number of new connections made (which JA does so well with the "follow" button on the participating members in these chat sessions)  When I was at Yahoo, we used to measure the health and vitality of an online community by the density (number) of connections between its members.