Telecommuting & Conference Calls

Today, Brian offers his tips for successfully handling an international conference call while working from home.

1. Wake up two hours before the morning call. This leave you plenty of time to have breakfast, shave, take a shower, setup the laptop, find your phone headset and dress in professional attire.
2. As you start breakfast, you realize filling the kettle with water for a nice cup of tea would be easier without all these dirty dishes in the sink. Take a few moments to wash the dishes, since there is still plenty of time to get ready for the call.
3. Notice the lower water pressure as you fill the sink with water. Remember that your wife is running the sprinkler every morning because the yard had to be dug up to fix the septic tank, so the grass seed is still trying to grow in 100+ degree heat. This means the shower may have to wait.
4. Make tea, pour milk over cereal, take breakfast to computer for a quick check of the Internet.
5. Make mistake of checking work e-mail, start replying to the weekend’s backlog of messages.
6. Eat soggy Special K because you spend too long replying to e-mail.
7. Make mistake of checking personal e-mail as the remnants of your tea are getting cold.
8. Realize the conference call starts in 15 minutes. Notice you are unshaven and unshowered. Remember that the audience in Europe cannot see you, so this is not terribly relevant.
9. Setup work laptop in the den, retrieve headset for cordless phone, look up information to dial into the conference bridge.
10. Remove cat from laptop.
11. Realize the conference bridge number is in Germany and you have no international dialing plan on your home phone.
12. Swear loudly.
13. Find your wallet, quickly buy $10.00 in Skype credits, remind yourself to expense this later.
14. Dial into call early, with plenty of time to setup the laptop for the presentation.
15. Find out the conference is running ahead of schedule, so the organizer immediately passes you control of the webmeeting.
16. Quickly reshuffle desktop windows as you bringup the presentation.
17. Relocate conference to bedroom as the sound of the dryer bleeds into your laptop’s onboard microphone.
18. Spend the next two hours droning on about your product, advancing through PowerPoint slides as you imagine your audience across the ocean doing anything except paying attention to your corporate message.
19. While engaged in droning, strain to hear audience members ask questions using what might be the world’s tiniest speaker phone. Hope that a combination of poor audio quality and broken English will not prevent you from properly answering very technical questions.
20. After the presentation is complete, put Skype on mute and listen intently to the “open conversation” to make sure you can answer any questions the local sales rep cannot handle.
21. Realize five minutes into the “open conversation” that you cannot hear a majority of the comments (see #19 concerning the speaker phone, which may have a hand crank). Listen anyway, hoping someone will yell your name out when your help is required.
22. Tote laptop across the house as you use the office computer to reply to e-mail, making sure your correspondence is not accidentally viewed as a “presentation” by an unknown number of Europeans.
23. Answer one question, reassuring your audience that you have not left to take a nap. However, since the laptop is very portable, do not mention that you answered the question from your kitchen while preparing lunch in the microwave.
24. Eat lunch on the couch, pausing between bites to make sure the microphone is still muted. Chewing noises have no need to be sent via VoIP.
25. Answer additional questions, encouraging the audience to approach the world’s tiniest speaker phone and address it as you would a small child. Do not fear the speaker phone. Love the speaker phone. Find a replacement for the speaker phone immediately after this call ends.
26. Finish lunch. Observe the call is still in progress. Observe you are still wearing the same shorts & boxers you had on at breakfast. Sigh loudly.
27. Carry laptop into bedroom. Place laptop on bed. Look in dresser for the clothes you will wear to work when you are eventually freed from conference call limbo.
28. Remove cat from laptop. This is the same cat from step #10.
29. Contemplate starting your shower before the call ends. Note that your laptop is not waterproof. Find alternate activity.
30. Answer audience question, assuming you understood the original question. Take deafening silence as acknowledgement of answer. Mute microphone. Search for soda in fridge.
31. Remove cat from laptop. Contemplate becoming a dog owner.
32. Over four hours into conference call, Skype disconnects you. Attempt to reenter conference call, only to receive a “conference call is locked” message in English and German. Note German phone error messages are stern and unfriendly. Make note never to annoy or irritate German phone company employees.
33. Check e-mail for angry “where the [deleted] are you?!?” message from sales person’s Blackberry.
34. Remove cat from laptop. Check Facebook for funny links to cat videos, which may prove your cat is not the dumbest animal on the planet.
35. Note your work inbox has no angry Blackberry messages from anyone in Europe.
36. Celebrate your freedom from the conference call by performing the daily hygiene ritual associated with early morning, even though you had lunch over an hour ago.
37. Go into work. Encounter road construction. Contemplate returning to home.
38. Arrive at work, where no cat must be removed from your laptop.
39. Remember you have another conference call with Europe tomorrow morning.
40. Mutter under breath.

All this and I get paid, too 🙂