ECSCW2007 in Limerick starting
Very early morning. Got out of bed 05:00 and arrived Hilton at 07:00. No sign of iBahn, Hiton's preferred ISP. After 35 minutes we found iBahn's technician. but no conference code. I phoned all their support lines, without luck.
After some coffee and more telephone calls, and some nasty emails via Hilton's free Internet, we got the Conference Code.
Suddenly all rooms worked, but one. The Harris room net was not working. It was a patch cord in the wrong place.
Hilton had also managed to swap vga feeds between conference rooms!
Finally, just before 09:00, everything worked. At the end of the day, I have to say that Hilton's and iBahn's efforts are quite unprofessional...
5 Comments:
That IS unprofessional. Surprising for a newly opened hotel that you'd think was trying to make a good impression. Ah well, it may be because of the Irish malaise; you know how a garage says they'll ring you back, and they don't, or someone says they'll contact you when something is in stock, and they don't, and so on... No-one feels any responsibility for their actions, or guilt when they let someone else down. Very frustrating.
I think it's more than an Irish problem. It happens all over the world at present. And it gets worse with outsourcing. Next time you try to phone your local whatever vendor, it'll be Mr. Bingjitanimoxi with a very strange accent who will politely read out to you what it says on his screen. Nobody else wants to do anything for you. They are busy phoning Mrs Bingjitanimoxi on another support line.
That's a sorry state for both iBahn and the Hilton. Its a pity that you've had to iron out their glitches. On the outsourcing, don't forget to say that you'll hear it in a pseudo-american accent and due to caller id, they'll have a prompt screen asking about Faircity or the performance of the Irish rugby team...
The Hilton are hopeless. Even yesterday (Friday, last day of the conference, we were there since monday), they were directing people looking for ECSCW to the wrong room.
so. It's done and we made it.
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