Conference call simulator | Hacker News Reader

Conference call simulator

conferencecall.biz

370 pointsrnl108 comments

Oh, man. I wrote this thing with my buddy @weinventyou.

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.

If it makes you feel better, I hate video conferences but will readily admit they’ve made my life easier!

my voice is in there :)

ilxor?

This is a work of art.

This is incredible. One of the best pieces of internet art I've seen in a long time.

Very nice work – great choice of aesthetics! Thanks for this!

I've seen this before and still can't figure out if it's an ad or a Godspeed You Black Emperor song.

I first thought of this song: https://youtu.be/VXPoJAyeF8k?t=1m22s

Not enough guitars for Godspeed, I reckon, but it definitely deserves a place alongside "Telephone and Rubber Band" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWZ4pve5Mkc) and "Opus Number 1" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqB8v14U_zs). Any other good telephone related tracks?

Laurie Anderson - O Superman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkfpi2H8tOE

Plaid & Bob Jaroc - War Dialer: https://youtu.be/sfLQ8EEoKeU?t=22s

A few Pink Floyd songs:

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

"Hangin' On The Telephone" - The Nerves (not the Blondie cover!)

Such a great song. I love the original, he sounds like Weird Al! Beats the Blondie version hands down imho...

https://youtu.be/emy5mA8Ixtc

The Books - Free Translator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGjs8TCGvQI)

"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

It reminds me of EBN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQZsKWV4mDo

I was only able to get through about 30 seconds before cringing, but does it eventually include someone who spends 10 minutes eating an apple dipped in dorito chips?

It's always the person who has a $500 microphone set up too, so you get to not only hear them chew, but you can even hear the inner workings of their esophagus swallowing every bite.

> does it eventually include someone who spends 10 minutes eating an apple dipped in dorito chips?

My favourite was a conference call on which, for ten minutes, we heard someone’s three year olds puking, crying, screaming and crapping themselves while the mom tried to clean up with the mute button accidentally disengaged.

The call that lives in my mind was a long time ago. It was a sales pitch selling I-don't-even-remember, but given the participants I remember probably some web publishing tool.

Then my manager, the person who would actually make any decisions, took a call and stepped out of the room while the sales-droid was mid-pitch. The other three of us are suppressing laughter, and then see $boss hang up and just walk away while a polished, chipper voice drones on about all the great features of whatever it was.

At which point we have an etiquette problem. One person looks at me uncomfortably and leaves. I can tell the other really wants to bolt too, so I break in and apologetically manufacture a vague emergency to explain why we need to pick up the call later.

Why didn't someone say "Hey Helen, you know you're not on mute right?"

Sometimes Helen isn’t on speaker phone, and the handset is laying on the desk while she deals with the emergency.

Helen doesn’t hear the warnings, sadly.

> Why didn't someone say "Hey Helen, you know you're not on mute right?"

Helen was dealing with puking, crying, screaming and crapping themselves. We were taking too long planning a budget.

Wow. Never have I been more grateful that our stuff has the ability to disable anyone's can/mic.

That was my life, nearly every week. We had someone who doesn't mute and his kid will be crying all through the meeting. People tried reminding him couple of times to no avail.

Later, the teleconference software added a button where the organizer could mute everyone and we could solve this problem.

I used to work third shift support. On long conference calls wasn't uncommon for people who were at home to fall asleep and start snoring.

I feel like this would be good visual art display at the MoMA.. you know the videos that play endlessly in some dark room behind a black curtain...

Agreed. It's evocative, and way better than the exhibit where the clown weeps at you continuously.

I've been listening for about a half hour now. It feels like I joined a meeting and I'm completely ignoring it. It's so satisfying.

This is, simultaneously:

* an all-too-realistic snapshot of corporate life

* a sobering commentary on the state of conference call norms and terribly interoperating related technologies

* if Bladerunner met Office Space

* a playbook on how to respond to various real-world conference call mishaps

* the funniest thing I've seen in some time

Me: [finishes summarizing work items x,y,z]

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.

"Sorry, was I on mute?"

jachee? I guess we've lost jachee.

Almost real, it's just missing loud audio feedback loops.

And people starting to speak at the same time and stopping multiple times due to a few seconds of lag

There's definitely both of these items if you listen long enough.

"...if you listen long enough." O__O That much conference call purgatory is not healthy

Also no mystery heavy breather/loud typer.

What about the guy who speaks his native language in a dialect that nobody can understand.

And then there's the non-native speaker...

Mine had a Loud Typer, and someone called on them to mute out. Just like IRL.

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 love mechs. I hate that no business VoIP app has push-to-talk. I keep having to switch windows to unmute, talk, and mute myself.

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.

I would pay extra for this feature. We used to use Mumble for voice chat before hangouts was a thing, push-to-talk is the best.

You should consider getting a headset that has a physical mute button on it.

Sorry posted the wrong code. You will find what you need at this page for microphone mute.

https://autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=15509

> I love mechs.

Your office neighbors do not.

Nobody minds since we're in an open office anyway so everyone has to wear headphones to block all noise to get any serious work done.

Or, y'know, we work from home.

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."

That's kind of a weird thing to shout on a conf call; I tend to go with "WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!" ;D

Also missing Zoom audio artifacts.

>just missing loud audio feedback loops

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.

From the same artist: http://doonaldjtrump.com/

Reminds me of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNz82r5nyUw

Makes me laugh every time.

That one is great. I totally lost it at the part with the dog. Scary and accurate.

I could totally see this as a museum exhibit. Where I work, we regularly have people dial in from a downtown office and almost every call features sirens in the background. Needs more sirens.

For some reason the desktop version has some background music (mobile does not it seems?) which makes it so much more relaxing.

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?

It reminded me of some of the 'hidden' tracks at the end of Tool albums.

Relaxing? I'm pretty sure it was meant to be eerie and sinister.

This is trauma inducing. Well done

Dystopian and soul-crushing, just like the real thing.

The visuals remind me of Koyaanisqatsi - I'd love Philip Glass as a soundtrack.

Listening to this at work is perfect, as all the noisy people who sit near me is bleeding through my headphones.

God, I hate open offices and conference calls/webinars.

edit: it's even better with multiple tabs open.

This is a nice reality check for remote-work partisans.

Yeah, we have the technology, but in practice you get this...

Thats why async systems like issue trackers work well. Also has the benefit of having everything written down and searchable.

Not enough "Hey, who just joined?"

i only made it to like the 3rd audio sample and this is honestly and genuinely unbearable. great job capturing that feeling. good work.

This is amazing. Belongs in a museum.

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).

This is a little too real.

This is oddly relaxing to listen to. It's as if it's the background noise for 90% of my day to day work.

Wait, do you mean the internet or the internet?

Ooh sorry, I mean the interrrnet, not the interrrrrnet

I find this to be genius / fun and scary - a perfect balance.

Oh wow, when the dog started barking - amazing. This is dead on!

Do I hear Kai Ryssdal?

This one?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/conferencecall.biz/audio/78.mp3

Yeah! Zach did an interview for Marketplace and Kai asked if he could record one.

Thanks, I hate it.

Reminds me of the bank I used to write code for.

I'm billing for this.

Hit too close to home.

This is so soothing that I fell asleep to it.

I could watch this for hours.

Sadly very accurate

Hello... Hello...

Do people still do conference calls nowadays?

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.

>Do people still do conference calls nowadays?

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

Yep. I work for a massive integrator – American* – and we still use the good old dial-in.

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.

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.

It’s one of the many reasons why calls are awful!

I'm one of those people who is very effective over the phone - should I choose to dominate the call.

Yes. I'm on a conference call about 5 hours every day.

I absolutely hate google hangouts.

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.

And, of course, "we're getting kicked out".

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.

Invariably, the higher the company status of the attendee, the higher the likelihood they will have problems.

CEO takes the call on his old cellphone while hiking along I-5

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?'

Zoom allows the call owner to mute everyone. That has been great for killing the typers.

how about they just use ML for once and detect the typist and mute her automatically?

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.

I prefer dial in bridges to other options

Hangouts is a conference call, so yes. :-)

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.

Don't forget all the feedback loops and weird echos. I still don't know what causes all the echos.

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....

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.

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