Jelle Druyts

Confcalling (conference babbling errr calling for those lucky enough not to have taken part in the phenomenon) is the corporate fishtank of communication. I don't know what I mean by that yet but I just figured it sounded cool so I'll come up with some kind of explanation now... You can drop lots of fishes in a tank, you can all go 'blub' as much as you want and the bubbles will certainly look really cool, but in the end you're nothing more than a colorful floatation device with a serious communication problem.

Here's a typical confcall for you:

Screeky computer voice: "*beep*screech*fiiiiii* has logged on to the conference call, please wait until the meeting organiser has found the proper way to enable DTMF tones on his phone".
(Wait a while and be thankful for the beautiful soothing music.)

You: Hi guys!
Everyone: blabelajzbelazehlazeja
You: Sorry, what was that last thing?
Everyone: scooblamoqhzaozieajklhda
You: I still didn't quite catch that. Can anyone repeat?
Everyone: shmaaazoakjshqksjhdlksjdsapzoie

After that, you get some more confusing interpersonal communication, and then it really gets fun when multiple groups try talking to each other over the same line. Frequency multiplexing is certainly useful (DSL wouldn't exist without it) but the human ear just isn't designed to function as a demultiplexer so this turns out to be quite exhausting for the brain.

So after a while everybody just gets pretty tired of the whole thing and you get some of those embarassing silent moments where everybody's basically sitting on the toilet or something in an attempt to make some meaningful use of the time being spent here. Then in the end, the meeting organiser will most likely say: "Thanks all, I don't have a clue what any of you said so I'll just send you all an email tomorrow."

Ahhh I do love a good ol' low-tech confcall