We have a permant meeting open the whole day where everybody is free to join. Normally, it is started in the morning and a few people will join. After initial chit-chat everbody is doing their work either with the microphone off or on. When there are short topics to be discussed or questions arise it is directly done in the meeting and for bigger topics a new meeting/call is setup with the people involved. So most of the time it is quiet but you only hear the typing of your colleagues.
It basically mimics an open space office and direct human interaction where you can ask questions and overhear interesting topics with the advantage of being able to simply leave (or lower the volume) when you have a meeting or need absolute silence.
Additionally, we have a coffee break meeting in the afternoon for half an hour, that is also not obligatory, in which you can small-talk with your colleagues.
So, in total we have lots of opportunities to interact with colleagues but nothing is mandatory.
For me, and most people I've worked with, having an all-day meeting specifically to mimic the open office is not something we'd ever propose ourselves. Was it a bottom-up or a top-down decision? Is everyone happy with it?
Multirepo management is extremely frustrating compared to "it's all in the same folder".
Surely if it is an advantage to rename once in a ginormous, single code base there must also be leaky abstractions, poorly defined interfaces, god objects, etc present at the same time?
Whenever I find I need to rename anything across domains, it's a matter of updating the "core" repository and then just pulling the newest version.