OK, so I just spent about 45 minutes on the phone talking to Michael. He's really enthusiastic about the whole thing, and has also had quite a bit of interest in the job. He's going to wait for a few more CVs, then talk to the top candidates, and then he'd like me to talk to them as well. (Dom should probably be involved in those conversations too, or even do it on his own if he prefers; I think Michael picked me to talk to because I was the one that answered his emails, not for any other reason.)
I think the main issues for his project are going to be user authentication, handling spam, custom metadata, custom queries, and custom design. Regarding the latter, I sent him the link to the CSS zen garden and explained that this is the sort of thing I'm aiming for in OpenGuides' HTML. Basically, I think OpenGuides can be made to do what he wants without too much convolution, it just needs someone with the time to work on it. Like, someone being paid to do so :)
Yay!
Kake