Intelligent Hosted Conferencing

Recently a fellow blogger pointed me to this website, which is a great resource for etiquette and preparedness in teleconferencing.

I have yet to experience a good hosted conference service that is intuitive and also powerful. Most of the money in this industry is still being spent on traditional reservationless audio conference calls. The age-old dial a number, input your PIN and wait for the moderator. Whoop-pee.

Apps like Foonz and Jajah are cute and I suppose some would use this for their conference calls but for those of us who take part in at least 1-2 organized conference calls (with 5 or more participants) per day it is unlikely these services would offer enough oomph to satisfy the moderator/host or the participants.

Making the service grandma-friendly is a great idea but let us not forget what makes up the majority of people using these hosted services. IMHO Professionals, consultants, SOHO, SMB and Enterprise business people need more than just basic functionality in order to increase efficiency and make the best use of their time on the call. I have yet to see a compelling, powerful, easy to use and affordable hosted audio conference call service to date.

If you think you know of something that would fit the bill, PLEASE let’s hear about it.