My First Teleconference
Yesterday I had my first teleconference. The word teleconference
gives me an entirely inappropriate mental picture; some sort of super-hi-tech wizardry like the holograms at the Jedi Council. Sadly the reality is far less cool - I phone the lab, they put me on speaker and put the phone on the table between them.
Sound quality was less than ideal, which didn't matter at first (everyone's voice was perfectly clear), but towards the end of the [almost 2 hour long] meeting I was getting a headache from a combination of the tinniness and the need to set the volume fairly high for it to be clear. More importantly, the phone was refusing to duplex, so whenever I spoke I couldn't hear them, which made me speak less than I otherwise would have done... come to think of it they may not consider this such a bad thing. I'm not sure whether this was because of the speakerphone at their end, because I was using Skype (in which case I've had this before but it's not normal), or just some quirk on the line that day, but I'm hoping it was one of the latter two because then it won't be like this every week.
Now I'm trying to figure out how to record the meeting, at the request of the person who will be presenting next week. If that works well it could be useful for me too, especially because it is easier for my mind to wander if I can't see the person who's speaking, so there were a few points that I wished I could rewind to catch a piece of explanation.
Anyway, technological issues aside I'm glad we've started doing this. For the most part it doesn't matter that I'm 2,000 miles away from my colleagues, but it does make it easier for me to drift aimlessly, and harder to keep in touch with what all of they are doing. This audio link is an imperfect solution, but it certainly helps.
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