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Executive Service Corps
of Chicago |
Using the Web for Conference Calling Part One of a Two Part Series on New TechnologyBy Mark Rissman, ESC Consultant The nature of ESC’s consulting business continues to evolve. Our clients are sometimes more global in nature and their expectations of us as both efficient and effective consultants, continues to grow. While I’m not a proponent for technology for its own sake, I always like to have the appropriate tools for the job. In this article, I would like to present you with two tools that may improve your ability to be more efficient and effective. The tool described here in part 1 (of two parts) is an improvement on an old idea: conference calling. Of all the conference calling websites, I have found only one so far that does not charge a per/minute fee for each participant on the conference call. That web site is called www.freeconference.com (henceforth called in this article; freeconference.) This website allows the conference call organizer (we’ll call him/her the “administrator”) to design a conference call and manage the various aspects of it. It might work something like this: A person who wishes to have a future conference call would first have to register as a user on freeconference. After registering, this person would now have the option of designing a conference call for a particular group of people. This person would then begin to follow the process of scheduling a conference call and henceforth, become the conference call administrator. The first choice you would have is to determine whether you as the administrator will pay for all costs of the conference call (an 800 number is used and all costs of participants’ calls would be charged to the administrator’s account.) This is called the Web-scheduled Premium 800 service. The other choice, which I am recommending, is to select the Web-scheduled Standard service. This service should be free as long as all participants use a phone that will use minutes that have already been paid for through a standard monthly fee (i.e.; like a typical cell phone calling program that allows x number of minutes/month). As long as the callers to this conference call have the minutes available on their own calling programs, the cost of the conference call will be essentially free. With that said, the next step in setting up the conference call is to input how many participants will be involved in the conference call. This website allows up to and including 100 participants. That should certainly be enough for most ESC project teams and their client participants. You will also select the date, time and duration of your conference call in this step. The maximum time allowed for free calls is 2 hour and 55 minutes. If more time were needed, then the administrator would have to consider using freeconference’s premium service. Once the date, time and duration are determined, the administrator can create their own private Participant Access Code or leave it blank, to be created by freeconference. This access code allows your call to remain private and inaccessible by outsiders. The final few steps allow you turn a chime on so that every time a participant joins or leaves the call a gentle bell will sound. You can also set the mode of the conference call to three different modes: conversation, Q&A mode and presentation mode. The conversation mode will be the mode that most will need to select. You will have the option to list the participants you would like to invite via e-mail and then you will be asked if you need any of the various premium services that freeconference has to offer (i.e.; conference recording, conference transcription). The very last step is to confirm all the options that have been set up and to confirm that the conference call is set up the way it should be. If e-mail invitations have been sent to the various participants, they will have the option of confirming or denying their participation in the call; thus notifying you as the administrator of who intends to join the conference call. At this point, you and your participants should be all set to call into the pre-assigned freeconference phone number at the pre-assigned time and be prompted for a pre-assigned Participant Access Code. You will probably hear a chime and then each participant, upon hearing the chime, should announce their arrival to the call. That’s it. Please give it a try and let me know what you think. I can be reached at mrissman2@comcast.net Happy free conferencing! Next month: The Electronic Meeting Room |
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