Don't Ever Do a Conference Call from an Airport

Don’t Ever Do a Conference Call from an Airport

Ever.  Just say no thank you, you’re not available.  Airports are terrible places to be on a phone call.  You can’t hear the call, the call is barraged with P.A. system announcements.  It’s disjointed and difficult. 

Better to force the call to happen at another time or send a delegate from your team or company on your behalf.  If you *must* do a call from an airport, I’d say best practices are:

1. Let the meeting organizer know ahead of time that you have no choice (if the meeting must be scheduled at that time)

2. Remind all participants up front that you’re in an airport

3. Make liberal use of the mute and unmute functions.  Phones all have different ways of doing this, but most conference call platforms have universal *6 mute and *7 unmute commands

4. If you can’t hear everything you need to hear on the call, ask one meeting participant at the end of the call if they can recap key items and next steps for you after the fact