Tuesday, June 05, 2007

When the technology lets you down



It's a Kn0wledge Gr0up quarterly meeting (covering Europe and Asia, but effectively involving a handful of people from across the UK and India) in the South of England today. My colleague and I decide that in the interests of the environment and our sanity, we'll take part by video link.

Can we video link to the office out in India? Yes.

Can we video link to the Home Counties? No.

Can we even phone that office? No, their phone lines are down.

Is our company's on-line meeting facility down for the day as well? Of course it is.

So after an hour and a half of faffing about, we eventually start the meeting with A and I joining by means of a phone link to one of the southern guy's mobile phone on speaker phone and with them sharing a video link to India.

These meetings can be fairly painful at the best of times, and the additional distancing by a dodgy phone link and a less than perfect on-line screen sharing facility isn't helping. Though on the plus side it does mean my colleague and I can privately share wry observations and even rest our eyes in one of the more long winded afternoon sessions without anyone being any the wiser.

Assuming of course none of them ever read this...

No comments: