-

Environment
- Try to select a quiet environment for your conference.

-

Quality of Equipment
- If you are using a speaker-phone, try to use a high quality speakerphones for better auditory.
-Try to stay no more than 4 feet away from the speaker, to ensure clarity of sound input & output.

-

Conference Chairperson
Try to appoint a chairperson, where his / her role may include the following :-
- Facilitate and Coordinate the Conference.
-Main liaison between Conference Participants and the Help Desk Support.
-Oversee the proper operations of the conference, to ensure all participants conform to the Conference ground rules.

-

Plan Ahead
Unless it’s an impromptu conference, otherwise, always give ample / advance notice to all participants for their pre-conference preparations :-
-Advise the participants of the date, time and expected duration of the conference
-Always provide the Meeting Agenda and any Printed Materials needed in advance

top

-

Conference Prelude
-Always start the meeting with the Meeting Agenda and the Meeting Ground Rules.

top

-

Greeting Message
To facilitate a more effective conference, alternatively, the Conference Administrator can record the Meeting Agenda in the Greeting Message.  (Refer to the Conference Mgmt Serve – Administrator Guide).

Example 1 :-
“Welcome to the Monthly Project Status Meeting.  The agenda for today’s meeting is :-
(1) Project Status Updates,  (2) Highlights of Issues & accolades,  (3) Action Plans &
(4) Deliverables Standards.”

Example 2 :-
“Welcome to the Project Steering Committee Meeting.  2 new items have been added to today’s  agenda (1) Introduction of new committee member (2) Deliverables Standards.   Please refer to your email dated 6 Jan 2003 at 10am for more details. You are now joining the conferencing”.

top

-

Conference Ground Rules
Try to enforce some basic disciplines for an effective and fruitful conference, such as :-

>Get the participants to identify themselves when they speak (especially helpful if the conference size is large).
>Encourage participants to take turn to speak
>Encourage participants to pause in between their speech to allow for comments, or Q & A
>Ask all participants to mute the speakerphone microphone when they are not speaking
>The speaker should try to spell out any unusual terms, names or numbers for the benefits of other participants
>Encourage participation at all time to keep things moving, rather than leaving a long silence during the conference.
>When asking questions, try to direct the questions / comments to specific individuals or locations, unless questions is open to all for comments.

-If any participant(s) have to temporarily leave the conference, remind them not to put the phone on hold (especially those phone systems with music!).  Instead, ask them to either :-
- Hang up the phone.  Rejoin the conference by dialing in again upon return, or
- Leave the phone on but mute the microphone while he / she is away.

top

-

Sound Quality
What To Do :-
- If you experience any bad line, poor sound quality, background noises, disruptions or any other interference, try to hang up the phone and redial to the conference

top