Conference call question

[jp61616]

We have a polycom phone conference system that we use. It works fine, but now the board of trustees (about 30 people) want to sit around in a big square and phone conference with people from other locations. The polycom speakers and mics will not handle this, with the polycom in the middle of the square some trustees would be too far to hear or be heard. Can you use 2 phone conference systems in the same room or would you get mic feedback? They would be dialing into an 800# bridge. Or is there anyway to hook up all 30 people with a headset and mic of some sort and plug that into the phone system? I suggested that each trustee bring their own cell and headset and dial into the bridge like that, but I'm not sure that would work either, with roaming charges and different providers. I don't even know if you can use a cell to call a bridge, I've never tried it. If anybody has any thoughts on the best way to do this I'd love to hear it.

 

[hawks]

Check your Polycom it should have a place to connect extra mics just for this application.

 

[N2NT]

You can absolutely use a cell on conference bridge...I spend half my time on one it seems...as to the feedback issue, you will just have to experiment with the facility to see...
The polycoms I use have two external speaker/mics with about 20 feet of cord and that gives us about a 40 foot area to cover...You must not have the polycom with those.

 

[GHTROUT]

I'd prolly get the Polycom with the extra microphones.

As an extra: I recently bought a few Wireless ClearOne MaxAttach "looks like two base units" speakerphones

http://www.clearone.com

While they work OK, they have a fault or two: You need to charge two units; you cannot turn off one unit and operate with just one unless you walk the thing out of range; the charger plug that fits into the spkrphone is a lousy fit.b They only send one charger by default - yet you have two units to charge. They have a perpetual "bonus" deal where you can send away for another charger for free. how idiotic.

Polycom has faults as well, but not really as far as user operation and physical function. The Polycom faults I find are mostly "after time, they get worse"

 

[lretrievers]

Polycoms come in many sizes. I have seen them in conference rooms that have speakers in the 4 corners of the room along with microphones. They have the ability to accomodate very large conference rooms.

 

[NastyNed2]

I had to do this once (with an hour's notice!!). We already had a Polycom EX with the extension mics. The power supply for the Polycom had an RCA jack to send the audio to other devices. I was also in charge of a pro audio system, so I had the cables I needed to connect the Polycom to a small powered speaker. The Polycom speaker took care of part of the square, the powered speaker took care of the other end of the square. Most of the participants were just listening. Those who had to talk sat closest to the mics.