Pretty much what the title implies: for a variety of reasons, I find myself in a position where people keep holding or suggesting conference calls as a way of getting the relevant players together on the phone if not in person. I’m not wild about this, but I’m curious what other people think:
Note that I’m talking about what Mike Kozlowski would probably call “legacy teleconferencing,” which does not involve video of the conferees. Video conferencing is a different thing, with its own set of problems.
I voted weird and awkward, but it is *sometimes* the least of evils
I think my ratio of teleconference meetings to in-person meetings is like 2:1, so I just totally accept them as a regular thing.
The thing that’s awkward is the mixed meeting — four people in a room with three on the phone, say. It’s clear there that some people are just second-hand citizens.
It makes sense to jet over to DC or California or Europe for a multi-day meeting, but sometimes you need to meet for just an hour. Telecons are much more efficient for the latter.
I agree with Mike that the hybrid meeting–somebody essential who cannot be there in person dials in–is the worst of both worlds. Lately we have had several thesis proposals/defenses in my department where one of the committee was present via speakerphone. To say it was awkward is putting it mildly.
I don’t think I’ve ever been involved in a teleconference that wasn’t a mixed meeting, at least in a strict sense. There have always been at least two participants in the same place, usually more.
A lot of the time, I end up thinking it would be better to just handle the whole thing with a series of emails, but there are a lot of people who resist anything text-based.
Chad, those are the kind of teleconferences I end up in – ones that could have been several emails. Occasionally it is the lesser of evils (like 1 day drive, 1/2 day meeting, 1 day drive). I’m involved in a project that had monthly conference calls for a year that were, imho, completely unnecessary. Luckily, that project is almost over and the couple of calls we’ve had lately have actually been not a complete waste of an hour.
I do lots of WebEx meetings, which are essentially teleconferences with crappy visuals (usually powerpoint or someone sharing a spreadsheet.)
I don’t mind them because I can do other things while I listen in.
My group has a phone conference once per week. As a new grad student, I am actually a bit grateful that it’s via phone, because I usually have no clue what most of them are talking about, so it’s a good opportunity to practice my Minesweeper skills…
Still, once per week seems excessive.
For boring meetings where I’m attending on the off-chance that someone will mention something I need to know about, I’d much rather be on the phone. That way, I can do other work while I’m on the conference call.
Conference calls are really only good for a max of about 1.5 hours. Beyond that, it’s way too easy to zone out.
My longest conference call was a training session I sat in on from a distance for 5 days (approx 7 hours a day). I couldn’t travel that week due to family things in the evenings. It gets REALLY hard to stay focused when you’re on the phone that long.
While there are better things than teleconferences (meetings in Honolulu come to mind) for the most part they are a godsend if you’re government funded and live out west. A typical meeting in DC means flying out the day before, and getting back around 10 pm; 36h trip for a 1 h meeting. Telecon, especially with web-ex or similar mechanism to throw up graphics or a power point presentation, is so much of a time saver I live with the qualitative problems.
I wrote a comment, but then deleted it, because it would have revealed that I Know Too Much.
I’ve been trying to get people to try meeting in virtual worlds…. Nobody believes me if they haven’t tried it and experienced it (and it may well be that even once you’ve learned how to interact with them so there’s not the technical barrier, only a minority have this experience), but meetings in virtual worlds are far less painful than video conferences. There is a sense of immersion when you’re in a virtual world — you’re “there” with your avatar — that makes the meeting better.
I’ve had meetings in Second Life about grant proposals, etc. They work. While it’s not as good as in-person, I’ve preferred them to teleconferences or video conferences. More promising in the future are the open source platforms — OpenSim and OpenWonderland. The latter recently even had a VNC module implemented, so that you can work together in world and see a shared computer desktop. It’s easy to imagine using that for showing slides, visuals, etc.