Have you thought of registering #buddydev on freenode for maybe the people that are all in here to discuss their sites, hints and tricks, and maybe idling in there sometime and maybe having some dev chats?
I see some of the same people in the buddypress-dev irc channel but feel weird asking them questions so was thinking that maybe there should be another avenue to discuss gallery, cosmic buddy, and your other how tos.
It's not registered and I'm idling in there at #buddydev on freenode.net and will try to throughout the day if people want to drop in. I'm definitely not an expert but maybe the buddydev members can all get together to ask and answer questions in real time instead of just forums.