Friday, January 8th, 2010
We are more connected than ever before. Between the email, voice mail and BlackBerry or other PDA it is difficult to escape the endless stream of information from your work and personal life. It just seems to me we are heading to where there is no escaping work and like many of the other modern day work convenience maybe conference calls are getting too convenient.
Let’s face it, you can do a conference call from anywhere. Just like you can talk to people from anywhere, I don’t even want to know all the places that calls are done from, conference calls are as convenient as your next cell phone call. When cell phones first came out the conference call service industry would discourage people from using them on a cell phone because they introduced a lot of noise and the networks were such that a dropped call during the conference call was pretty much a certainty. So, naturally our customers would call us and complain about the conference call service because they were losing participants during the call of there was a lot of noise on the call. And inevitably when our operators would join the conference call we would identify the culprit and most times it was a participant on the conference call on a cell phone. Well that has certainly changed. Now most of the participants on a conference call are probably on a cell phone. With the cell phone networks improvement and better equipment you can join and participate on a conference call from anywhere you can get a cell phone signal. And that is just about anywhere.
And now that people can get you just about anywhere they can also get you just about anytime. People seem to expect that since you have a cell phone than I should be able to reach anytime, anywhere. So, before when you would schedule a conference call with Asia, for instance, the participants would schedule the conference call for a time that was good for all concerned, knowing that people needed to be in the office during normal work hours to conduct the call. But know it seems that people just assume you can get on a call anytime. My wife, for instance, is regularly asked to attend conference calls with other parts of the world at all hours of the night. The other night she had three conference calls from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at night with Australia and Asia. They just don’t seem to think that there are any boundaries since you are always accessible.
So, what do you think? Are conference calls too convenient?
www.zipconferencing.com
Tags: Blackberry, Call Asia, Cell Phone Networks, Cell Phones, Conference Call Service, Convenience, Culprit, Endless Stream, Face, Participant, Participants, Pda, Personal Life, Phone Call, Voice Mail
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Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
I sat down to write about how conference calls help manage your way around the crazy busy world we live in and guess what? I got interrupted, had to handle multiple emergencies and yes, attend several conference calls. So, it is certainly not a cure for the crazy busy lifestyle I am so familiar with but it certainly helps. Conference calls simply provide a way to get more done in the same amount of time. If I couldn’t attend those conference calls, I would have had to get in my car and drive, along with all the other participants to the office and find an open conference room, and have our discussion there. That is bad enough that I have to spend the time commuting and the expense to get there, but then I would be in a location where I am limited in what I can do. In my case I would have encountered the other emergency that happened to come up and I would have had to get back in my car and travel back to my home office again. Again wasting time travelling, etc.
So, instead opf taking up all this time traveling I was able to jump on a conference call from wherever I am at the time, thanks to cell phones, take part in a productive meeting, simply hang up my phone and immediately return to the task I was on before the meeting, deal with the emergency, etc. And I think that while we take many of these modern day marvels fro granted, the conference call is as important to helping us manage our busy lives as many of the other conveniences we now take for granted. Cell phones are great but you can’t meet with ten people at the same time without the conference call. The ability to carry around your email box on a handheld device is super, but after you get an email saying that you need to meet on a particular topic it would do you no good if you had to drop everything and come back to the office to meet instead of just jumping on a conference call.
Maybe you appreciate the conveniences that help you manage your busy world, maybe you feel like you can’t escape from them, but one thing is for certain, conference calls help us manage today’s busy world. www.zipconferencing.com
Tags: Amount Of Time, Car And Drive, Car Travel, Cell Phones, Conference Call, Conveniences, Email, Email Box, Emergencies, Guess, Handheld Device, Lifestyle, Limited, Marvels, Open Conference, Participants, Sat, Time Thanks, Traveling, Travelling, Wasting Time
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Monday, August 10th, 2009
It’s summertime! That means vacations, family, barbecues and for the fortunate people on the coasts, the beach. And we all take time off during the summer to enjoy the weather that only comes around for a few months a year for most of us. But that also doesn’t mean that work totally stops. Many people own their own business or have a job where it is simply understood that 40 hours a week punching a clock is not enough. Today the miracle of cell phones, blackberrys and conference calls can keep you in touch without the need to cancel your entire vacation. A conference call, like many of these modern day conveniences allows you to stay in touch with your work or family wihtout having to be there physically. And that can be a good thing!
Some people feel that wireless devices and conference calls are a leash they would rather do without, but without them what would you have to do. It used to be that the hotel phone or even a pay phone and a calling card was the way people stayed in touch, but now a cell phone andyou can be on a conference call, conducting a business meeting without leaving your lounge chair. The hotel, the mountains, the lake or the beach can now be the place you are when you attend a conference call. Of course, you may want to keep yourself on mute so that the sound of the waves does not interrupt the conference call. That is what I did just last week. I had a week off planned and of course at the last minute an important meeting comes up and there is no way to avoid it. Did I cancel my vacation? No. Did I stay home the day of the call? No. All I had to do was remember that I had a conference call, put the call in number and passcode on my Blackberry and I am all set.
So, I don’t know about you, but I sure feel that is a lot more convenient than staying home or missing the meeting which in this case was not an option. So, the next time you are going on vacation and an important meeting comes up, simply set up a confernece call and the interuption on your well deserved time off will be minimal. www.zipconferencing.com
Tags: Blackberry, Blackberrys, Calling Card, Cell Phone, Cell Phones, Coasts, Conducting A Business Meeting, Conference Call, Conveniences, Family Barbecues, Hotel Phone, Lounge Chair, Miracle, Mountains, Own Business, Passcode, Staying Home, Summertime, Waves, Weather
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