I am pretty sure this is going to be about the 2.0 stuff and how they want to improve the experience for people who seem to mostly not be fans of it. I don't think it'll be about new stuff like what you're suggesting.
From my experience, this only works for a short time. If chat is very busy, it'll start scrolling after a very short time.
Anyhow, taking questions on the forum ahead of time and then answer at least some of those on the stream is the best option for a stream that is very fast like this will probably be. For a slower stream, you can have the stream moderator(s) grab questions and add them to a shared document the streamer(s) can read from. That's usually done by asking people to type QUESTION in caps at the beginning of the line so it stands out for the moderators to grab. But it's not great if the chat is scrolling very quickly. In those cases, using an external option like this forum to gather questions ahead of time works best.
I really hope that they take questions ahead of time rather than trying to read the chat to answer questions like they've tried (and failed) to do in the past. I also really hope they get sound and video working ahead of time and test connections with everyone who is taking part (Joel, Rick, etc.).
And although I didn't grab a quote about it, there was a comment about faatal being part of the stream. I thought he was part of one of the 1.0 dev streams, though I might be remembering incorrectly. It would be nice to see him be part of it since he's one of the main ones actually doing a lot of the work they will probably be talking about. But the end result will probably be the same either way... we'll get the same answers, no matter who says them.
Just, please... NO DATES!