No direct contact of the major players making up 55%+ of the mined blocks, with the possible exception of Slush(?) and/or Tycho (?) in "secret."
Just FYI: I contacted the top ten mining pools (as listed in the stickied threads in the Mining Pools subforum) directly via email way back in October, copied the email to them in the Mining Pools forum, and kept them 'in the loop' on all of this.
I probably should have posted all of my followup emails to them in the Mining Pools forum, also; as I said, I'm terrible at that kind of "keep track of who you've told what and make sure you've got 'buy-in' from X Y and Z" thing.
I think my only really major blunder was being too stubborn about inserting some wording into BIP 16 that Luke wanted inserted; I let my emotions cloud my judgement.