Who ever thought this was an efficient system of communicating? I’m currently on a teleconference with 20 people, all of which keep logging off and on resulting in random pings, half of them can’t be heard, the other half are using microphones which pick up every bit of background noise in their offices. 2 hours ahead of complete pointlessness, hearing pings, shuffling paper, and background conversations. Bloody shambles!

And now half the users are saying they can’t see the bloody presentation! Someone shoot me now.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ[/video]

Had some bad ones but now I’m on fibre it’s all going well

That youtube video is efficient compared to the one I’m in right now.

I’m on one now. Everyone on the call can see each other across the floor….

I love a good conference call. Especially when people ninja their way in so that nobody knows they’re on the call, and don’t tell you until after someone’s slagged them, that will never get old

I do huge numbers of them. Go on mute. Daydream.

I had one “on-line meeting” on Open University last year. What a waste of time… 😆

Go on mute. Daydream.

Exactly what I do. Bit embarrassing though when someone asks your opinion and you’re not listening. In this scenario I usually brazenly admit I was a bit distracted and could they repeat the question. 🙂

I was on one recently, hosted by a major provider of business communications systems, using their own web conferencing system.

The call was an absolute shambles, with the first 25 mins+ of the call taken up while they tried to get audio working, getting rid of deafening feedback, and umpteen “can everyone hear us now?” questions.

and just to remind you all if there is no video then all the other people working from home are probably naked

I do huge numbers of them. Go on mute. Daydream.

Or do what I’m doing now. Mute and browse.

I get to chair them, and it’s horrible; you can’t see when someone wants to speak, unless you’re really good at voices, and tones and accents half the time you have no idea who’s speaking. I mostly end up giving each empty blank pause 15 seconds and then chiming in with a completely unnatural “Tim, what do you think?” or “Eddie, would you like to comment on that?” I sound like a primary school teacher.

I had a very productive one a couple of weeks back.. as I managed to buy a couple of tickets for Wiggins hour attempt whilst on the call!

I like to share my screen then have a few personal emails float up in the bottom right of the screen for just long enough to catch everyone’s interest 😳

I said I wasn’t doing 7hrs+ travelling for a 2hrs meeting, I would join by teleconf if required. 1hr before the meeting it was cancelled due to other priorities. Glad I didn’t travel for it now. Still spending 2hrs on the internets, just the same as if I was on the call though 😉

I said I wasn’t doing 7hrs+ travelling for a 2hrs meeting

You’re lucky. A couple of months ago at the insistence of a project director I had to do 10 hours travelling, plus an overnight stay in Bedford (sh*thole BTW, never go there!) for a 90 minute client meeting.

What a coincidence on one now. The only entertainment I get from it is that one bloke sounds exactly like Dennis Hopper. 🙂

Just be careful when you unmute you don’t hang up by accident.

Just be careful when you unmute you don’t hang up by accident.

More times than I care to remember!

Our parent company is American and we have one most afternoons

The UK contingent have a habit of talking amongst themselves in whispers and the US have a habit of talking amongst themselves very loudly

The outcome of the last one was that we were going to find out the price of a component and let them know

Exactly what I do. Bit embarrassing though when someone asks your opinion and you’re not listening. In this scenario I usually brazenly admit I was a bit distracted and could they repeat the question.

It’s normally the time to say it’s a really bad connection so you didn’t hear the previous points being made in full 😀

I often have to attend teleconferences with a team of people all sitting together in the same room while I’m sat on the phone. I constantly have to ask people to repeat what they’ve said as the audio quality isn’t great. Chairing meetings in that situation is interesting! If I’m working from home with the window open, the sound of cats fighting invariably interrupts me.

We used to have daily briefings on them. I liked to get online first using a second phone in the room, and play a couple of seconds of music off my phone when asked to state my name. Then enjoy the puzzled look on the Sgt or Inspectors face when ‘Snoop Dog has left the call’.

Id rather conference call than have to attend them in person, currently in Changhi airport waiting for the 0120 red eye to HKG, then land, a couple of hours sleep then 11, 1230 and 1400 meetings which involve running around in 30 degree plus heat, suited up etc.
Give me Lync call, camera off, sitting in my jimjams with a mug of coffee and my feet up.

i fell asleep* during an incident call once and woke up in the middle of an entirely different call about an hour later!!!

*in my defence the first incident had nothing to do with my area but we tended to get called into these things ‘just in case’. havent a clue what the 2nd call was about I just got the hell outta there**

** always a good idea to ‘forget’ to say your name when joining the call, makes for an easy disco

On a 20+ call right now. Only two of us speaking English. The rest are all American.
Buzzword bullshit bingo begins!

Used to have to do this regularly on joint UK/India/Australia calls, that was fun… half the Indians would be on mobiles put near a speaker phone…

Been teleconferencing since it was all new and exciting… Highlights include someone falling asleep and snoring while not on mute. Also have enjoyed sharing a number of audio only trips to the loo. Poo, pee or both bingo!

I was in one yesterday with Germans, Italians and Americans. Culture clash combined with dodgy comms.

It sounded like a tribute to Norman Collier.

On a 20+ call right now. Only two of us speaking English. The rest are all American.
Buzzword bullshit bingo begins!

Working for Staples is all go 😀

njee20 – Member
I do huge numbers of them. Go on mute. Work on other Projects whilst on the call… .

FIFY

This is something I feel strongly about!

They’re sodding useless and only promoted as pathetic “ooh, let’s reduce our carbon footprint” or for the benefit of Londoners that don’t move from London.

They should be proposed as “we can all do a bit of travelling but have a proper meeting where things can be discussed, sorted and after a bit of a fracas, agreed – you know, how humans have communicated for a fair while now…… or we can **** about listening to muffled incoherent waffling for X amount of hours with zero control for X hours, where there are more totally unnecessary actions outstanding after the call, than from before the call started.

It’s a comically bad to conduct a telephone discussion with anything more than 2 people; it’s that simple.

Humans – a lot less advanced than we’d like to think.

They should be proposed as “we can all do a bit of travelling but have a proper meeting where things can be discussed

So, when I have someone in Holland, me in the UK, 3 Americans and an Australian, where do you propose we meet on a weekly basis?

You’re lucky. A couple of months ago at the insistence of a project director I had to do 10 hours travelling, plus an overnight stay in Bedford (sh*thole BTW, never go there!) for a 90 minute client meeting.

A couple of weeks back I had to travel to Michigan for a 3-hour meeting. A few years back I had to travel to Hong Kong for a half-day workshop. Still better than a web conference or an online meeting though!

Couple of years ago, I was on a conference call at work with a few folk in our office, a few visiting our office from other branches, and other people in different offices.

Whilst we were doing the ‘waiting for everyone’ smalltalk thing at the start, an attractive and rather well-endowed young lady walked through our open plan office. “Jesus Christ,” said one of our visiting Southern contingent, “look at the bazongas on that!!”

Said young lady then spun around, revealing the cordless headset being worn on the offside of her head…

Always good when doing a screen share and an instant message pops up slagging one of the meeting participants 😀

Always turn off and IM function!

Re long haul/short trips – Madrid for lunch, Seattle for a morning, Atlanta for a morning, Sydney for three days, and a few more besides!

It’s getting a little better these days, but might have to do a Memphis for an hour and a half meeting in a week or so. 🙁

Haha hagi – we had just that. Presenter gets a Lync im pop-up saying “xx is f**king useless!” Just as XX was asking a (useless) question haha how we all laughed – on mute of course 🙂

Nobody owned up to the ‘unexpected item in bagging area’ that was broadcast on a call I was on recently.