society's_child,
I attended my first get together of a Deaf Chat Coffee today. We had 15 or so folks. Talked/signed/wrote for nearly 3 1/2 hours. It was great and I learned a lot. I am losing my hearing and hear about 30% of spoken words with hearing aids IF there is no background noise (HoH).
My advise to y'all might be to take paper and pencil. 
I wrote and had terp assistance. I'm learning ASL. We had a blast!
Dave
