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I don't know if this qualifies as an invention, but perhaps more as a recommended practice.
I frequently participate in large conference calls involving 8 or more participants.
Problem: in largish conference calls where online conferencing is not utilized, frequently everyone joins the call at
once, and frequently announce their presence at the same time as well, resulting in a cacophany of peoples stomping on eachother. What to do?
My proposal is for each person to announce themselves in roughly alphabetical order, so that all participants are noted in an organized fashion, consecutively. It may not completely eliminate the problem, but should greatly reduce it.
Of course, given international calls, one would have to determine which alphabet and phonetic spelling would be applicable; (I would default to the name spelling rendered in the email system, and the language dominated by the call).
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Sudden flashback to "sorting" algorithms in COBOL.
So who is here?
Hi, it's David, is there a Conrad, a Bret or an Angelique?.
Errrm, no. But I am Brian!
No! I am Brian, and so is my wife! |
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The computer could moderate this. The computer speaks "A through M please", then when it detects silence for a few seconds it says "N through Z please". This way the minute-taker has an easier time checking people's names off. |
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The service I use requires new joiners to state their name before joining. The leader can at any time press a few buttons and have the current list read. (And maybe just new joiners since the list was last read?) |
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Distributing a sort to individual nodes is tricky - you can't "sort yourself" without knowing who your predecessor in the sort order is, and if you knew that, you probably wouldn't need the roll call to begin with. |
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So, I think I'd solve this through communicating names in advance through another channel, and having the computer/conferencing system centrally sort and announce the list (perhaps using audio snippets previously spoken by the participants). |
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Oh! What a smart solution that sidesteps the problem entirely! I like it. |
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One would think that conference calls could be combined with chat rooms, so that people could take notes, make observations, or announce their status or intention to speak without interrupting the train of thought. |
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Humans are a lot better than computers at routing social traffic. |
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[Condiment], that's called a webmeeting. |
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