Conference Calls: Threat or Menace?
Tragically my third of three conference calls today was scuppered by a gremlin in the WebEx machine, so instead I am going to blog about them.
I do not like conference calls. Who does really? It’s no reflection of the people on them - I am lucky enough to work with lots of insightful ones - and not usually down to the content: even in the research industry, we live in interesting times. It’s simply that they’re a broken medium for my purposes.
As a confirmed phone-phobic, I’ve felt for a while that the phone is basically a legacy technology - I feel burning resentment at every training course which bangs on about how much better and more human phone communication is compared to nasty old email, and I smirk happily at the many studies suggesting that “the kids” use their “phones” for anything but talking.
That said the basic point of a phone call doesn’t escape me - it’s great for quick one-on-one communication when you want to confirm or chase something. It’s sort of like a “voice IM” I guess - and that’s a good thing, there’s a role for that.
Conference calls aren’t one-on-one, and they aren’t quick.
Two things bug me about c-calls. One is that they transport you back to a 1920s world of wireless operators and crackly lines: even on a landline it’s difficult to hear anyone, and if you’re foolish enough to use a mobile it’s like a moon landings re-enactment.
The other thing is my fault: reader, when a conference call is going on (especially one with a webcast component!) I find my hand inexorably creeping to the mouse, and all the other more interesting things I have open: my twitter feed, my email, Google reader…. I can’t help it! It’s continuous partial attention! It’s how the world works! 2.0!!
It’s also very unprofessional and I’d feel bad admitting it if I didn’t feel fairly sure that 80% of other c-call participants are doing the same thing. Unless they’re in a shared meeting room with the phone on speaker, in which case they’re making rude gestures at each other.
So it’s a dreadful way of getting information across. What’s the alternative? For virtual meetings, I’m not sure there is one (though virtual meetings have the high noise:signal ratio of physical meetings, only without biscuits). For webinars/webcasts/etc. though - think of the way training courses have become increasingly digital and modular: obviously this is a fiendish way to reduce the training budget but for a lot of things it also really is easier to go through an online module in your own time. There must be a tool out there that can create shared information-bearing environments which could be used asynchronously. Maybe you could call it an “internet” or something.
