Mute? What's Mute??

I just got off of a Webinar. Not a great one, mind you. An hour of my life I'll never get back. But there were some amusing moments.

The facilitator asked us to mute our phones. Makes sense. She stated that if the phone didn't have a mute button, you could hit #5. So one woman dials in we hear this:

Woman Hi, I'm here for the webinar.
Facilitator: Welcome, please go to the website and then mute your phone.
W: How do I mute my phone?
F: You might have a MUTE button, if not, hit #5.
W: Okay, I can't find the mute botton so I'll use #5. There. I did it.
F: We can still hear you so your phone isn't muted yet.
W: Oh, sorry, there is that better? [Yup, you're loud and clear, now]

I'm assuming she finally figured it out because we didn't hear her anymore. Then, about the same time, another woman comes on the line and says, "Hey, how long does this thing last?" The Facilitator says, "The Webinar is scheduled for one hour." Woman says, in an annoyed voice, "I don't have a whole hour for this!" Facilitator says, "Why don't you just stay for whatever time you can." Click.

One person stated that he had a conference room with about 10 people in it and they had the presentation on a large screen in the room. But they couldn't hear anything. Now, for those of us looking at the first slide of the presentation, it said in big letters - We will not be using VoIP for this presentation, please call the number below! The facilitator asked him if the first slide was up. He said yes. She asked if he read it and saw the number to call in He said yes. She asked if he had a speaker phone in the room. He said yes. She suggested he call the number on the slide and use the speaker phone. After a couple of seconds of silence, he said, "Oh, okay, we'll try that."

Another person wrote in the chat room that he couldn't hear the presentation and wondered if it was becuase he had his phone on mute. Um, that would be no.

Towards the end of the session, a man who had obviously not muted the phone sighed or yawned very loudly. Oh, and in the little chat room at the side (which is primarily for questions and to state which company we were with) one of the attendees actually started chatting with another person! Said she was going to call him, how was the family, did they sell that house, etc.

Ah, yes, an hour of my life.