Nodereference fields instead of Checkboxes on Node Creation Page

I would love to have a configurable option that allows me to instead of using og_subgroups checkboxes on the node creation page, to instead have one or more nodereference fields.

The motivation behind this would be for example in creating a node type, event, that is a subgroup of og node types venue and artist.

Instead of seeing a list of all potential og parent nodes, the user would see an autocomplete\nodereference text field for each node type that could be a n og parent. In this case, the user would simply type in the artist and the venue name, instead of selecting each from a list of checkboxes containing both artists and venues.

With some direction, I could submit a patch for this feature.