Two things about this...
First, I like Skype. It is easy to install and use and I have always been
given prompt professional responses to any questions.
Second, I personally find telephone conferences awkward. I seem incapable to
understand 'who is who' by simply listening to tone of voice and this
impedes my participation (which I know may not be a problem for others).
Also, in general I do not like the quality of VOIP (or cell) services due to
reliability and clarity issues. And, as this entire conversation has
illustrated, the technology currently available to make group
voice-conferencing easy is NOT readily available to 'the masses' (due to
prohibitive cost...), which of course is all the more reason that 'we' must
push this envelope <smile>.
At the same time, in terms of group communication processes that seem to
work well for large, widely dispersed participants, the most productive
'virtual' conferences I ever participated in were conducted during a
dedicated 48-72 hour time slot and happened via email.
The topic of the meeting was taken from the overall agenda of the group.
Featured presenters prepared statements on this topic, summarizing what was
known and developing questions to be discussed. All those interested to
participate in this decision-making (or educational) conversation signed-up
in advance.
Then about 72-hours before a particular conference was to convene, the
opening statements were distributed to everyone who had signed-up to
participate.
This gave attendees time to read, digest, and prepare their initial
responses prior to the commencement of the conference. Then when the
conference convened, each email from each attendee went to everyone on the
group list.
This process worked well in terms of accommodating timezones and giving
everyone the opportunity to participate at that time of day most convenient
for them. Which is much the way things work here, except we have not (as far
as I know) experimented with setting a particular time-slot to hold a
dedicated converstation with the pre-defined objective of arriving at a
decision pertinent to our agenda.
And doing this, truly, is the real key: that each of us who signed-up made a
committment to check our email at least 3 times each day during this
dedicated time-slot and to give participation our priority attention.
Anyway, just some things to think about... ~Christine
----- Original Message ------
From: "Ian" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:23 AM
Subject: Re: [marketing] request for SIP providers
On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 09:43 +0100, Florian Effenberger wrote:
Hi Hamish,
Hamish Bell wrote on 2010-01-21 09.41:
> Why don't we use Skype or something? It works on Windows/Linux/Mac etc
> and is free for calling people Skype-to-Skype.
>
> Wouldn't that be easier?
IMHO, Skype conference calls are limited to 10 participants and Skype
doesn't work reliably on all machines. On Linux, it can be a mess, and
behind my firewall, it's always a coincidence if voice calls work or
not. :-(
Skype works fine on Ubuntu Linux here on my EEEPC netbook. Minor
glitches such as the microphone getting set to too low to hear on
starting skype and having to kill previous skypes before loading a new
one. Not really a mess, just some minor irritations :-)
In my experience it is quality of the lines that matter, eg
unpredictability of someone heavily loading the network or something.
That will probably affect any VOIP system using the standard internet as
the medium.
--
Ian
Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications
A new approach to assessment for learning
www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940
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