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Comment by bthornbury | Hacker News Reader

I'm convinced this exact scenario, bad A/V at the start of a meeting, has cost billions in lost dev time.

I completely agree. Out of all the places I've worked at and all of the developers I've talked to, not being able to work AV with TVs for presenting or conference calls is the common, almost 100% of the time an issue.

One place I worked at spent about $25,000 to get an AV system setup complete with conference calling that was supposed to make it "easy". Every single meeting without fail we'd waste 10 minutes trying to figure it out then have to bring someone from IT support who would then spend 10 minutes themselves fiddling with it.

Perhaps if expectations were set before rolling out a new system, that IT Support would attend every meeting ten minutes early to get things working, conference system decision-makers would have priorities better aligned with the rest of the organization. Of course you could plan for a "Phase 2" in which mandatory attendance would cease, but that would be based on performance rather than timing.

> IT Support would attend every meeting ten minutes early to get things working

Why must these things be so complicated that you need IT support for them? The purpose of computers is to automate and make things easier.

That's the point: they shouldn't be. A situation like that would be seen as an intolerable waste in the C-suite (with the exception of their IT support guy). However, if the status quo were for the support to be there every time, that sets up a different conversation in the executive meeting:

CEO: "Why does everything take so long to get done?"

Everyone: "We can only have 15 meetings starting at the same time, and any additional meetings must be delayed 20 minutes, because there are only 15 IT support techs."

CEO: "What?!? Is this something to do with that teleconference project? That was like a year ago!"

CIO: "That's why I've suggested to the stakeholders, most of whom are here in this meeting, that they sign off on moving to Phase 2. That way we'll have more capacity to fix the ongoing issues with desktops and printers..."

Everyone: "Absolutely not! Your techs get there ten minutes ahead of time, and usually they're still struggling to get everything working five minutes after we should have started! The system you bought is crap!"

CIO: "We've always had a great relationship with that vendor, but unfortunately their product has had a few issues..."

CEO: "I know what 'great relationship' means... I don't care if the salesmen for competing products don't have comparable expense accounts, just get something in here that works!"

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