Why I hate conference calls

[Nick Griffin]

I wish it wasn’t so, but I’ve lived through essentially ALL of this. What was missing however was my favorite when someone on the call from his home phone started to send a fax during the conference call. Unfortunately he forgot that he only had the ONE phone line.

Thanx, Mark!

[Jeff Breuer]

Nice Mark! They say the funniest stuff is the most painful. Sadly a very truthful account.

[Mark Suszko]

It shows you that good communication relies on subtle and not-subtle visual cues to keep the flow organized. Audio-alone leads to those awkward conflicts. Using skype, facetime, or google hangouts, you get the additional visual cue from their facial expressions and gestures or postures when someone else wants to speak, and you are also getting visual cues regarding how what you’re saying is going over.

[Mike Cohen]

Happens multiple times a week to millions of people. I wonder how many years worth of time are wasted waiting for people to join these calls.

Some systems announce the name, others simply make a sound, so it goes like this:

Host: Hello?

silence

BING

Host: Who joined?

Bob: Bob from corporate.

Host: Hi Bob. I invited 26 people but you’re the only one here. I better send a reminder.

(email then goes out 2 min past the call time saying “Hi are you joining the call?”)

BING

Host: Who joined?

Joe: Joe.

Host: Hi Joe. What kept you?

Joe: It’s 9:02.

Host: Yes, what kept you?

Joe: Sorry.

it goes on very similar to the video

Other situations:

Calling into someone else’s call on the same line, and wondering what the heck is going on.

Someone calls from an airport, and every 2 minutes there is a loud announcement.

Using WebEx but someone tries to play a video and everyone sees less than 1 frame per second at 8bit color or worse, and nobody has the nerve to tell the host how bad it looks.

Moral of the story – use conference calls sparingly and only when a one-to-one call will not suffice.

Good for introductions of team members who are separated by geography. Not so good when two out of 10 people actually have things to talk about.

But it is part of business especially in the corporate world.

Mike Cohen

PS – Until I switched to Outlook I never understood the degree to which people live by their Outlook calendars.

Ooh, my calendar is telling me to check the TV and Film forum. Gotta go!

[Keith Ramos]

Conference calls are indeed a little complicated to execute! But they do save our time and expenses so its become essential to use conferencing for meetings, webinars, etc.