
Everyone dials in  - dwynings
http://nat.org/blog/2010/04/everyone-dials-in/
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ghshephard
I get pulled into a _lot_ of conference calls each week, some of them internal
product calls, some of them customer calls. Even though the conference rooms
are typically within a 90 second walk of my desk, I (and a good number of
other people in the same building as me) dial in rather than going to the
room.

Over time, people start to develop all sorts of etiquette for these type of
meetings (it's roughly the same for people who go to the room and just work on
a laptop) - if their attention is required, their name is called out, and the
context for the request is spelled out - the assumption is that the person has
been working on something else.

Microsoft Exchange (or iCal, or whatever mechanism that feeds the various
calendar apps) helps a lot - everyone has the meeting in their calendar, and
so various PDAs, Smart Phones, and Calendars of each individual light people
up and most people come online within 60-90 seconds of each other.

This is actually a really good solution for the downside of multi-tasking - I
can focus 100% on something else, and then, when I'm actually required for the
5-10 minutes of a 90 minute call, I can pay attention at that point.

In effect, you can get 20 people on a call, and instead of taking up 30 person
hours (20 * 1.5 hours) - it may cost the organization a small fraction of
that, with pretty much the same results.

Clearly for those meetings in which full participation is required, other
tactics are required - and I really do try to close my laptop and pay 100%
attention to what is going on.

I haven't noticed much difficulty, btw, in working by teleconference - I think
people just learn to develop new techniques to optimize the medium - Learning
to Mute, call from a good line, judge pauses appropriately to break in, etc..

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danielle17
We've got a lot of people who call in remotely for our weekly team meetings,
and in general I think conference calls are torture - but not because of the
sound quality (putting everyone on mute except the person speaking seems to
help). The thing that drives me crazy is waiting for people to call in so that
the call can start. I've been hoping someone will build a Twilio app (I work
for Twilio, but haven't hard time to make this one) that will call out to all
the participants of the conference call, and drop them into the call when they
answer so that they have to be on time.

Another cool solution is the recent feature 37Signals added to Campfire for
conference calling, which posts the call transcript back into the chat - nice
for people who can't be on the call, or couldn't hear very well.

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whughes
There's a conference call scene in this (relevant, interesting, funny) video
which I think applies to this topic:

[http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers-
outsourc...](http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers-outsourcing-
own-jobs-oversea,14329/)

I think that it could become a liability to do this at some point, though.
When everybody is calling in and people have flaky quality, you are wasting at
least some time. If a meeting is more effective in person, then have that
meeting in person! You shouldn't be afraid to exclude one or two people if
they're traveling; they're already excluded anyway. Why provide an illusion of
close involvement?

~~~
MichaelSalib
_When everybody is calling in and people have flaky quality, you are wasting
at least some time._

I've never noticed flaky microphones or audio quality from remote
participants. Ever. But I've often found that local participants are
completely inaudible. If every local participant just used a bluetooth
microphone (or really anything dedicated but the shared conference call
microphones), things would be so much better.

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rmorlok
I work on a team that has members distributed across two locations. We use the
policy described above, but there is a flip side to this problem. Most of our
developers are one location with a 1/6 minority in another. The larger group
of developers loses the advantages of face-to-face communication for meetings
in favor of equal footing for everyone. Is that a net improvement on quality
of communication? I don't know, but I'd rather meet with my colleagues in
adjacent cubes face-to-face rather than over the phone the way we do now.

~~~
chadgeidel
As a developer "on the other side" I can tell you that you would be surprised
how hard it is to follow along at these meetings.

For example: Most of the meetings I attend are largely ad-hoc with printed
material being handed out at the time of the meeting - usually not available
on the company intranet (or emailed) until after the meeting. It makes it
immensely difficult to follow along and contribute in a meaningful manner.

Honestly, there are many benefits to having everyone "remote" for a group
meeting. It focuses the meeting. After the meeting you still have the luxury
of walking over to your co-workers's desk and chatting in detail about the
problem.

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th
Requiring the communication medium to be the same for everyone during a
meeting is a great idea. However, I don't this conference call method is
scalable for phone conversations. I can't imagine 15 person conference call
would be very effective.

I think for larger meetings this "level playing field" solution would probably
work much better for video conferencing or combined text/audio conversations
such as on Skype. This way simple cues such as "I've got something to say when
you are finished" can be used without interrupting.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, I've found past 5 or so people, text works a lot better for the major
portion of the discussion. We even use IRC as a main meeting medium for one
project.

However, this does require that everyone be "text-fluent", i.e. able to
effectively produce and understand communications in a text-chat medium, in a
way that feels like conversation rather than people sending short memos to
each other. True of most people <30; intermittently true of people above that
age, depending on the person.

~~~
count
I'm on a 12 person call twice a week for about an hour. It works remarkably
well, with the caveat that it only does so when the manager running the
meeting is present. It helps to have someone run the meeting with an 'iron
fist' - keeps everybody on the same page and organized, without letting it
spiral off into details that are irrelevant to the other 10 people on the
call.

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ydant
I am in exactly that situation. It would probably help, but everyone "over
there" is in an open plan office. It's great idea, though.

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drac
even when everyone dials in, the people using a cellphone or joining
conference calls while travelling are at a distinct disadvantage. Any number
of calls I join have at least one guy having to drop out and come back in
because the signal keeps fading.

The other thing I've noticed with a large number of dial-in participants is
that there can be a lot of silent attendees and very few people talking. YMMV

~~~
count
Large numbers of silent attendees is normal in meetings with lots of people in
person too - most people just don't have anything to say!

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aantix
Skype is adding five way group conferencing. Maybe this could help to
alleviate such issues.

<http://mashable.com/2010/05/05/skype-group-video-calling/>

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JoeAltmaier
Strange to hear of people on this site, talking about dialing in. There are
many better solutions available. Sococo.com for one.

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stretchwithme
that's a great idea.

i'd also like to it possible for only one person to speak at the same time.

and keep track of who's talking the most. in some contexts that can be
helpful. it might be useful too if each partipant only had the floor for so
long.

