I have been reduced to one "space" since SL came out, but now that Growl is updated, I can safely confine Adium and other chatty apps to other spaces.
Growl is an effective tool for showing heads up displays for many apps that may update (or may not) their dock icons. For a dock hider like myself, and multiple space user, this utility is INVALUABLE.
Try in conjunction with GrowlMail and hardware growler. For sysadmins, use growlnotify and use the "listen" feature in the pref pane to monitor your flock of sheep, whether it be workstations or servers.