As a startup, you have to be flexible – in every regard. We’ve gotten to be extremely flexible with how and where we make conference calls. Pick a random hotel lobby – mezzanine levels tend to be good, empty meeting rooms are better. Or go onto a campus and find an empty classroom. Library study rooms are superb. Nothing though, beats the privacy of your own conference room on wheels.
A couple of weeks ago we came out of a meeting, and had 10 minutes before we had to jump on a conference call to Shanghai, China. So we drove over to the parking lot of a Border’s bookstore, sat in the car and hopped on their WiFi network, firing up Skype on Charles’ laptop. Laptop speakers are much better than crappy cell speakerphones and the quality of Skype rocks. Plus the price is right – 2 cents a minute to China. The WiFi network can extend out pretty far into the parking lot, but try to park as close to the door as you can. Of course, it works after hours too! No doubt there are other parking-lot Skype people out there, its a nice solution. You get the privacy of your own meeting room (your whole car!) with the advantages of cheap VoIP calling. I like it.
But I think this one is even cooler (and I have to give Charles full credit for it). We were heading down to Austin the other day, and we had a conference call w/ some folks in California. We both have these HP 6315′s that are on their last leg. His speakerphone doesn’t work at all and mine is quite muffled. The solution? One of these babies. An old-school casette adapter. Pretty low tech, but precisely what we needed! The HP’s have a headphone jack and so now we had a graphically-equalized, six-speaker conferencing system, as we were racing down I-35. Full-on stereophonic/telephonic integration for like $12 bucks at Radio Shack, plus it works in rent cars. Brilliant.