Frivolous Friday, 10.14.2011: Gaming the system

At work, the conferencing software's reach definitely exceeds its grasp. This was ably demonstrated on Monday's "Area Staff Meeting," originating in the Chicago office and streamed out to the provincials in the region. What you need to understand about our office's "big conference room" is that: 1.) "Big" is a relative designation, and 2.) It was designed when a mere handful of old-timers were movin' on up to that dee-luxe office suite in the sky-hi-hi.

Cut to 2011, and we're spilling out into the adjacent breakroom, with the latecomers bringing chairs in tow. Which means that, to someone in the back, what comes out of the conference-call speakers is more than slightly reminiscent of the "Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha..." of Charlie Brown's teacher. I suppose that could be a boon for anyone needing to sneak in some writing under the cover of note-taking. Except that's far too productive. See, I figure that when a company goes to such great lengths to waste your time, the only responsible response is to take ownership of such wastage. Maybe--dare I suggest?--even profit from it.

Naturally, I mean having the foresight to set up a betting pool, with the winner having the best accuracy in predicting:

1. Number of minutes between the official start time of the conference and its actual start
2. Number of inside jokes that only the "host" office understands
3. Number of times the video connection freezes or freaks out
4. Number of times one or both ends of the voice connection drops
5. Number of phone calls taken or hushed among the Powers That Be
   
6. Number of PowerPoint slides that contain the word "vision," "opportunity," or "strategic"
7. Number of remote workers dialing into the call who forget to mute their end of the connection
   
8. Whether or not corporate I/T will push out a Windows update that requires a reboot in the middle of the presentation
   

(Belatedly, it also occurs to me that the above could be trivially adapted to a college drinking game. Uh-oh. Needless to say, I won't be mentioning that to my co-workers: Given how our "keeper"--and I mean that in a good way--no longer bothers to lock the liquor cabinet, that could be exceedingly bad.)