(1) I'm definitely not conversational in any language other than English. (I'm very slowly working on Japanese, but I haven't really built up much vocabulary or much of the grammar. I'm less driven about learning than I probably should be, but I figure I can continue to work on it this slowly until I get to a certain point.) Have you had any stores of people with differing relative skills doing a language exchange?
(2) I live in a not-quite-densely-populated area (Amarillo, Texas), so I can only wonder how vibrant the CoffeeStrap user-base here would be. There's really no solution to this one other than to sign up and try to start something myself. It's what really kills me about living out here and seeing all of these cool services, but I suppose it comes with the territory.