What about interaction for the designers?

Big projects for me this week are mainly focused around webinar's and video productions. Which translates to many hours in front of the computer screen in editing. As I get into my "zone" with my new best friend - the computer screen - I wonder about the personal side of the trainings that I am working on. I've done a couple of webinar's at this point and have found it oddly isolating (especially when you use VOIP). Of course editing video is also pretty isolating. While designing any of the web-based training courses we of course, make sure that they are interactive for the learner, however, for the designer I usually work by myself with little interaction. What about the interaction for the designers? How do we make those important connections with other people, especially our learners? There are the social media channels that we all turn to so we can make the connections with others "like us" that we can learn from and share our knowledge with. If you are in a company that focuses on eLearning you have co-workers who understand the lingo and stresses that you face with your work, if not you do a lot of educating so you can brainstorm solutions to the problems you are facing. So, I ask you....how else can we as designers make those connections and gain the interactivity that we work so hard to ensure for our learners?