Tech Friday: FreeConference.com
Posted By RichC on September 4, 2009
I used an excellent free conference call product from FreeConference.com yesterday. The registration took about 3 minutes and a conference call can be scheduled in about 5 minutes. I set up my first call and had very good results while conferencing with three others … that is, right up until the end — see comment at bottom*. The call quality was excellent and having two options in setting up a free conference was most appreciated. It is hard to beat the price … FREE, although each participate must cover the long distance connection (there is a 10 cents per minute 800 number option if desired).
The first method is to schedule the call and reserve the appropriate number of lines (number of callers) in a planning process. The wizard walks the conference call planner through the steps by picking the date, time, etc. An email is sent to each participate or a fax document is ready to be filled out for those not savvy with email — do they still exist? The email contains the information needed to call in and participate at the appropriate time along with an 
attachment that will insert an entry into a calendar (ie. Outlook, Google calendar, Thunderbird/Sunbird/Lightning, iCal, etc.)
The second, and simpler, method is to give out the Conference on Demand phone number and private access code. This makes it very easy to put together a quick conference call. For example, today I sent ouf the time, Conference On Demand number and Access code via SMS message. Within a few minutes each participant had dialed in and 30 minutes later we were finish. Really simple.
* The glitch I mention above was one in which the participants of my conference call had all disconnected and I continued to tinker with the *-number control combinations. Unfortunately I found myself connected to another conference call … one that I wasn’t invited too. One oddity was that I could hear all the participants on this “green energy” call, but they couldn’t hear me? Lesson — avoid using this service IF the calls are classified or if critical information is being discussed and shared.
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