My Afternoon Tea At Calliflower’s

Image via Wikipedia

I was writing this post since some days, but today post from Alec Saunders forced me to complete it.

Since some months I got into the habit to connect to Iotum’s Calliflower and partecipate to Alec Saunders‘ SquawkBox.

For a strange joke, SquawkBox conferences begin (for me) at 5:00 pm (my time zone is GMT+1). So, sipping my tea, I listen what real experts say and try to learn something.

Calliflower is a conference service, a free one. You schedule your own audio conference, people connect and talk about what you want.

I like very much how simple is to connect:

• Free, using TringMe: just click and you are connected via pc
• Free, using Sitofono: just digit your phone number and the system call you back
• Using Skype or a normal phone to call a USA or France number

When connected, you enter the conference you have chosen and can immediately talk to other partecipants. I usually mute myself as my home is a sort of harbour and all other attendees could be bothered. By the way, this doesn’t limit the interaction because there’s also a chat.

I look at Calliflower conferences as radio shows but with more interaction: other than writing messages, I can see all attendees’ photos; it can seem strange but looking at other’s photo creates an empathy so that it’s natural to speak to complete unknown people. Another feature is that people disconnecting are marked with a red frame while connected ones are green framed.

Did I mention the agenda? Every calls has an agenda so that everyone knows what the subject of the call is. That’s important: often without a visual indication people begin to stray from the main point and the conference ends in a flop. In a sense, this helps a kind of dialogue mapping which I wrote about.

Other feature: although there’s no push-to-talk and everyone can freely speak, it’s possible to raise the hand, showing the will to say something. This leads to a regular flow of the conference where voices don’t overlap one another.

Finally, the conference can be recorded so that anyone can listen to it later.

My only concern is that, as I don’t know all attendees, I’d like to have an icon or a sign near the actual speaker; yes, I know I’m pedantic. By the way, I find this service really great.

Thanks Iotum!