This morning: I had an appointment with two folks from Shanghai for a teleconference to prepare a workshop. 8 am my local time. Since I am globalized, I am getting used to work at very weird times (recently, my telephone woke me up for a conference at 6 am). My wife has stopped complaining about teleconferences in the middle of the night. Anyhow.
One of the other two folks was the client, one a colleague. Both in Shanghai, different offices. The idea was that the client would call both of us in. 8.20 am my mobile rang; it was him. Then, he tried to also connect the Chinese colleague. I went into a waiting line with classical music, then I was kicked out of the line. We repeated the same process twice, with the same result.
No problem, I said – let me both call you with Skype Out. So, I got their numbers and started a Skype conference. In fact, my colleague has a Skype account, so I just needed to invite the client. Problem: he was behind an automatic operator system that wouldn’t let me get through to his line. Another three attempts without success.
Finally, my colleague proposed a classical teleconferencing system with access number in China. I called it using Skype Out, it worked perfectly, and one hour of conference costed me € 1 (US$ 1.50). It took us 45 minutes to get there. But finally we had our conference.
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