Yes I am also thinking that INDEPENDENCE of Bitcointalk would be a good thing!
It also will give the node community much more focus. Getting off Bitcointalk is a big step for cryptocurrencies!
In Bitcointalk, a coin is always just another 'altcoin' among scams, Pump&Dumpers and Tittycon dealers.
Getting an own forum is much more mature! On the other hand, it is not quite so easy, and many 'altcoins' fail when they try to do that.
Nxt did a good job, but it was/is hard work that requires a lot of participation by ALL involved parties, devs as well as early adopters.
How about getting a child board on nxtforum.org?
Nxt'ers are much more civilized than than alctoiners on Bitcointalk, and since node started out as NxtLite with PoS, they may be very supportive.
Remember that Jean-Luc said he respected node for doing their own implementation of the basic Nxt ideas- could be worth a try...
What about the Slack - https://slack.com/? SuperNET is using it and I think it works quite well.