this thing is great. don't have time to listen to it right now and see if it's changed at all, but when i listened to it last summer, i loved it. feels all too real.
i opened a radio show with 5 minutes of it once. then i sent it to some friends and half of them thought my email had been hacked and used to send out a phishing link (i felt bad after the fact for making it seem a little more ok to click on sketchy links).
The music is perfectly done, very understated and somewhere between soothing and menacing. I'm not even sure what to compare it to, some of the better produced podcasts maybe. Indirectly, Starship Titanic or Lot 2046 or something?
"Providence" from Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation features a clip of a forlorn message from Mike Watt to Thurston Moore: https://youtu.be/HNo5dCbKy0g?t=62
Using Hangouts has kind of eliminated the conference call problem for me. Audio quality is great, you can see who is speaking or know who wants to speak if the mute icon disappears.
Big companies still do them a lot. You also avoid the issue of people not being able to figure their computer audio out. They drive me crazy though. I usually call into conference calls via Hangouts.
Yes, especially at large, non-technical companies. Technically, we are using WebEx, but most remote folks are dialing in to a phone number versus using audio on their laptop.
I'm in at least one meeting a day that has dial in people.
At large technical companies as well unfortunately. It’s insane. never knowing who is talking, who is on the line. And that’s not talking about audio quality
There is a whole political/social angle as well. Some people are concall Jedi who can really wield power effectively on calls and dominate meetings better than in person.
You seem to be trying to make an anecdote about personal use.
This website is mimicking corporate conference calls.. and yes, companies take regular phone calls because they are collectively aware that expecting everyone to contact their business using Google Hangouts would be silly.
I dunno, we used Hangouts at Google and it was fine for meetings, though it did have some enhancements on top. It was possible to call in or out, though I never saw that feature used except "I wonder what happens if..."
Ultimately the problems with these meetings involve the social problems. Someone is absorbed in thought so they don't notice that a more quiet person in another room wants to talk. They point at the screen, not realizing that the other office can't see that. They point using their mouse cursor not realizing that it's too small to see on the screen. Or the more mundane; not having an agenda, inviting too many people, not inviting enough people, etc.
Even with Skype or hangout, someone at home always has a bandwidth issue so no-cam, also constant echo issues and typing sound almost triggers PTSD for me.
I've lost count how many meetings I been in where I completely lost what the speaker was saying because someone was clickly clacking on their keyboard the whole time. The requisite "Whomever is typing please mute yourself!", never works because the typist is never paying attention.
There should be an app that logs you into your mandatory conference calls so you can get the checkmark for attending, but completely isolates the user. Then, when you suddenly have to talk, and someone pings you, it will call you, and while its ringing it will play a pre-recorded, 'Oh damn, I think I'm having connection issues, can you repeat the question?'
To me this is just conference call by another name, with some nice extra features like video and screensharing. We still have people dialing in from mobile, cars, using a variety of devices, forgetting to mute/unmute, having background noise, bad connections, putting the conference mic in a bad location.
I remember those traditional conference phones usually having really good microphone quality and noise-reduction. You still have to invest in that gear with hangouts/Zoom/others.
Audio quality is variable. Sometimes there's serious lag. Screenshare often gets stuck. Sometimes Hangouts (well, now it's Meet) goes split-brain and some people join to find no one there, even though everyone else can see each other. Browser support is hideously narrow. Unmute sometimes doesn't work.
Oh, and the worst part: There are all these pesky humans involved!
Seriously, most of the stuff satirized in this art piece are human factors, or at least factors that have not particularly been changed by Hangouts and its ilk.
We get echoes when someone's mic is too close to their speakers, or doesn't have echo cancellation, etc. If you get echoes, there's someone who needs to mute. :-)
Hangouts is a specific tool requiring accounts with a specific corporation. My employers do not use Google to back their services, so it's a non-starter.
Phone calls, on the other hand, can work from just about anywhere using any service provider. Makes it much more useful than Hangouts.
We have a guy with a mechanical keyboard on the team. After a while people just started muting him in Hangouts. It's not even the mechanical keyboard itself that's the problem, but the way it interacts with whatever noise-filtering algorithms Hangouts runs.
I'm growing to like them too; I'm not using one right now, because of issues on my Linux desktop (my xmodmap settings keep resetting every couple minutes), but maybe one day I'll buy a better one or solve the problem with the (cheap) one I have.
And heavy breather who despite everyone trying to get their attention..... they clearly are not paying attention ... but will be the first person to send a stupid email after the call.
And that inevitable callback that goes to the attendee's voicemail instead.
A good number of "Training" videos at my work are recorded meetings / webinars in which someone demonstrated a skill or walked through an issue. I've watched maybe 40 of these archived videos so far. There is not a single one that does not have the meeting eventually brought to an abrupt halt when an attendee starts shouting "MAILBOX OF EXTENSION X-X-X-X IS NOT AVAILABLE."
This is absolutely awesome piece of art. I've worked at the BigCo for the 7 years (switched to startup a 3 years ago) and this site turned me on so much nostalgia.
It's pretty funny considering I work on one of those meeting products. It's also an excellent reminder for me of all the UX pain points involved in distributed meetings. Tech can be great but if UI has any friction, the overall UX will suffer.
PM: Ok, thanks, so could we just get an update on work items x,y,z
Me: ...
---
I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed ... and mad. I assume he heard parts of what I was saying and it triggered some rudimentary pattern recognition in his brain stem that remembered he was interested in x, y, and z.
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadi opened a radio show with 5 minutes of it once. then i sent it to some friends and half of them thought my email had been hacked and used to send out a phishing link (i felt bad after the fact for making it seem a little more ok to click on sketchy links).
https://s3.amazonaws.com/conferencecall.biz/audio/78.mp3
Plaid & Bob Jaroc - War Dialer: https://youtu.be/sfLQ8EEoKeU?t=22s
High Hopes (a hidden track after the end of the song — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Hopes_(Pink_Floyd_song)#C...): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl0d0Q7MyzA
Young Lust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Lust_(song)): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EM_fK9eOaQ
Keep Talking (no phone call in the actual song, but Stephen Hawking’s voice was taken from a British Telecom advert — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Talking): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ7zbzJZsjs
Such a great song. I love the original, he sounds like Weird Al! Beats the Blondie version hands down imho...
https://youtu.be/emy5mA8Ixtc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQZsKWV4mDo
Using Hangouts has kind of eliminated the conference call problem for me. Audio quality is great, you can see who is speaking or know who wants to speak if the mute icon disappears.
Yes, especially at large, non-technical companies. Technically, we are using WebEx, but most remote folks are dialing in to a phone number versus using audio on their laptop.
I'm in at least one meeting a day that has dial in people.
We tried 'Skype for Business' but as well as sounding like something you'd catch if you hung out at the bus station, the call quality was atrocious.
*Although we are in Australia.
It’s one of the many reasons why calls are awful!
I absolutely hate google hangouts.
This website is mimicking corporate conference calls.. and yes, companies take regular phone calls because they are collectively aware that expecting everyone to contact their business using Google Hangouts would be silly.
Ultimately the problems with these meetings involve the social problems. Someone is absorbed in thought so they don't notice that a more quiet person in another room wants to talk. They point at the screen, not realizing that the other office can't see that. They point using their mouse cursor not realizing that it's too small to see on the screen. Or the more mundane; not having an agenda, inviting too many people, not inviting enough people, etc.
And, of course, "we're getting kicked out".
There should be an app that logs you into your mandatory conference calls so you can get the checkmark for attending, but completely isolates the user. Then, when you suddenly have to talk, and someone pings you, it will call you, and while its ringing it will play a pre-recorded, 'Oh damn, I think I'm having connection issues, can you repeat the question?'
I remember those traditional conference phones usually having really good microphone quality and noise-reduction. You still have to invest in that gear with hangouts/Zoom/others.
Audio quality is variable. Sometimes there's serious lag. Screenshare often gets stuck. Sometimes Hangouts (well, now it's Meet) goes split-brain and some people join to find no one there, even though everyone else can see each other. Browser support is hideously narrow. Unmute sometimes doesn't work.
Oh, and the worst part: There are all these pesky humans involved!
Seriously, most of the stuff satirized in this art piece are human factors, or at least factors that have not particularly been changed by Hangouts and its ilk.
Plus the second somebody says something important, the audio drops out or gets choppy.
Yeah.... we have a long ways to go for conference calls of any type....
Phone calls, on the other hand, can work from just about anywhere using any service provider. Makes it much more useful than Hangouts.
Makes me laugh every time.
And then there's the non-native speaker...
https://autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=15509
Your office neighbors do not.
Or, y'know, we work from home.
A good number of "Training" videos at my work are recorded meetings / webinars in which someone demonstrated a skill or walked through an issue. I've watched maybe 40 of these archived videos so far. There is not a single one that does not have the meeting eventually brought to an abrupt halt when an attendee starts shouting "MAILBOX OF EXTENSION X-X-X-X IS NOT AVAILABLE."
I've got one!
This is absolutely awesome piece of art. I've worked at the BigCo for the 7 years (switched to startup a 3 years ago) and this site turned me on so much nostalgia.
God, I hate open offices and conference calls/webinars.
edit: it's even better with multiple tabs open.
PM: Ok, thanks, so could we just get an update on work items x,y,z
Me: ...
---
I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed ... and mad. I assume he heard parts of what I was saying and it triggered some rudimentary pattern recognition in his brain stem that remembered he was interested in x, y, and z.