Roll call

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A half-hour section of an industry call immediately following the period of joinder, during which the call convenor tries to identify who has dialed in. If the convenor is lucky, the call will be richly attended by participants who are prepared to admit it. Even then, extracting those confessions will involve long periods of static, punctuated by five people speaking at once, which the convenor will have to decipher. This can be a jarring experience, but not as jarring as the experience when no-one has dialled in. That can be quite the self-awakening for the convenor, as she finally grasps, in public, how little the rest of the world cares for her project.

There is a paradox here, though, because “the world” means those people on the call, and the worse attendance is, the fewer people there are to witness the humiliation.

Unless the person then blogs about it. There was once this lawyer who dialed into a law-firm presentation on SFTR via weblink. The law firm set it up so one could see the attendees. There was only one. The presenters continued heroically, as if addressing the masses at Bannockburn, and even gamely opening the call to questions at the end. Came there none.