Hi there! You've caught us at a bit of a quiet time, this forum's moved servers after a brief spell of downtime, and I think our usual crowd is still rebuilding itself. This is probably the main forum for people who focus on mapping for Quake. If you've got any questions, post them in the Mapping Help thread and I'm sure someone will help you out.
The speedmapping thread is at
http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=10196&start=3550
Currently anyone who's enthusiastic enough can just organise a new pack and give people a deadline, have a read and you'll see how that goes. It's not quite like the days where everyone would try and make maps simultaneously, but we all had more free time back in those days...