11 ms·
Conference call simulator
- arthur_pryor 8y agothis 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).
- MartianSquirrel 8y agoFor some reason the desktop version has some background music (mobile does not it seems?) which makes it so much more relaxing.
- Bartweiss 8y agoThe 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?
- King-Aaron 8y agoIt reminded me of some of the 'hidden' tracks at the end of Tool albums.
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoRelaxing? I'm pretty sure it was meant to be eerie and sinister.
- taborj 8y agoThis is a little too real.
- Raed667 8y agoHit too close to home.
- rkho 8y agoReminds me of the bank I used to write code for.
- tantalor 8y agoDo I hear Kai Ryssdal?
- tantalor 8y agoThis one? https://s3.amazonaws.com/conferencecall.biz/audio/78.mp3 https://s3.amazonaws.com/conferencecall.biz/audio/78.mp3
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 8y agoYeah! Zach did an interview for Marketplace and Kai asked if he could record one.
- gandreani 8y agoThis is trauma inducing. Well done
- zubairlk 8y agoHello... Hello...
- loudandskittish 8y agoI've seen this before and still can't figure out if it's an ad or a Godspeed You Black Emperor song.
- gerardnll 8y agoI first thought of this song: https://youtu.be/VXPoJAyeF8k?t=1m22s https://youtu.be/VXPoJAyeF8k?t=1m22s
- noelwelsh 8y agoNot enough guitars for Godspeed, I reckon, but it definitely deserves a place alongside "Telephone and Rubber Band" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWZ4pve5Mkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWZ4pve5Mkc) and "Opus Number 1" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqB8v14U_zs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqB8v14U_zs). Any other good telephone related tracks?
- seltzered_ 8y agoLaurie Anderson - O Superman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkfpi2H8tOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkfpi2H8tOE Plaid & Bob Jaroc - War Dialer: https://youtu.be/sfLQ8EEoKeU?t=22s https://youtu.be/sfLQ8EEoKeU?t=22s
- hypertexthero 8y agoA 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)#Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Hopes_(Pink_Floyd_song)#C...): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl0d0Q7MyzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl0d0Q7MyzA Young Lust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Lust_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Lust_(song)): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EM_fK9eOaQ 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Talking): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ7zbzJZsjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ7zbzJZsjs
- dsnuh 8y ago
- laverick 8y agoThis is amazing. Belongs in a museum.
- 7ewis 8y agoDo 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.
- ajmurmann 8y agoBig 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.
- tyingq 8y ago>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.
- baby 8y agoAt 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
- jen729w 8y agoYep. 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.
- Spooky23 8y agoThere 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!
- christophilus 8y agoReminds me of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNz82r5nyUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNz82r5nyUw Makes me laugh every time.
- ryandrake 8y agoThat one is great. I totally lost it at the part with the dog. Scary and accurate.
- flipp3r 8y agoAlmost real, it's just missing loud audio feedback loops.
- rozhok 8y ago>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.
- redisman 8y agoAnd people starting to speak at the same time and stopping multiple times due to a few seconds of lag
- ballenf 8y agoThere's definitely both of these items if you listen long enough.
- JohnWilcox 8y ago"...if you listen long enough." O__O That much conference call purgatory is not healthy
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoAlso no mystery heavy breather/loud typer.
- jachee 8y agoMine had a Loud Typer, and someone called on them to mute out. Just like IRL.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoWe 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.
- recursify 8y agoI could watch this for hours.
- Bluecobra 8y agoListening 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.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 8y agoOh, man. I wrote this thing with my buddy @weinventyou.
- masswerk 8y agoVery nice work – great choice of aesthetics! Thanks for this!
- athenot 8y agoIt'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.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 8y agoIf it makes you feel better, I hate video conferences but will readily admit they’ve made my life easier!
- arrakeen 8y agomy voice is in there :)
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 8y agoilxor?
- ajdlinux 8y agoThis is a work of art.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoThis is incredible. One of the best pieces of internet art I've seen in a long time.
- rkho 8y agoNot enough "Hey, who just joined?"
- csours 8y agoMe: [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.
- hateful 8y agoI'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.
- Domenic_S 8y agoThanks, I hate it.
- redorb 8y agoI find this to be genius / fun and scary - a perfect balance.
- deusofnull 8y agoi only made it to like the 3rd audio sample and this is honestly and genuinely unbearable. great job capturing that feeling. good work.
- canadianwriter 8y agoOh wow, when the dog started barking - amazing. This is dead on!
- anonu 8y agoI 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...
- pjscott 8y agoAgreed. It's evocative, and way better than the exhibit where the clown weeps at you continuously.
- code4tee 8y agoSadly very accurate
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- javiramos 8y agoFrom the same artist: http://doonaldjtrump.com/ http://doonaldjtrump.com/
- deathhand 8y agoThis is so soothing that I fell asleep to it.
- smadsen 8y agoI 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.
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoDystopian and soul-crushing, just like the real thing. The visuals remind me of Koyaanisqatsi - I'd love Philip Glass as a soundtrack.
- xpe 8y agoThis 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
- nickjj 8y agoI 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.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> 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.
- _jal 8y agoThe 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.
- oh_sigh 8y agoWhy didn't someone say "Hey Helen, you know you're not on mute right?"
- function_seven 8y agoSometimes 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.
- King-Aaron 8y agoWait, do you mean the internet or the internet? Ooh sorry, I mean the interrrnet, not the interrrrrnet
- bpchaps 8y agoThis is oddly relaxing to listen to. It's as if it's the background noise for 90% of my day to day work.
- closeparen 8y agoThis is a nice reality check for remote-work partisans. Yeah, we have the technology, but in practice you get this...
- hegz 8y agoThats why async systems like issue trackers work well. Also has the benefit of having everything written down and searchable.
- itomato 8y agoI'm billing for this.