I notice that our chat room, Ham Shack, is overall less active than it used to be, even though the Q/A activity has been improving a bit recently (all subjective, I have no numbers to back this up). I also notice that the sidebar widget that shows chat rooms hasn't been showing up on the main site at all lately (though I just saw it briefly on this meta, and I could be wrong about it never showing up).
Is there some broken association that can be fixed to make it show up on main as well as meta reliably? I think having chat more obviously available will help improve general participation indirectly.
I recognize that it might be that public beta sites don't have it, but comments there indicate that it should be showing up on question/answer pages (and in fact it does on meta, but not on main).
New observation July 8: The “n People Chatting” sidebar item is showing up frequently (though not on the front page), but it does not list the Ham Shack room or any other — oh wait, I said something in the room and now it does after a few minutes. Whew. So, problem fixed? I'll wait to make other observations or for official word.