Voicemail Announcement Systems for Coordination at Conferences, Elsewhere

This article stems from our recent experience covering a
large AIDS conference in Washington, D.C. About a thousand
people attended, including about 20 AIDS treatment activists
from several cities. In such situations, activists sometimes
meet before the conference to share information about what is
"hot," what is new and most important; there are many
simultaneous meetings, so people must choose, and the
official program seldom tells the real story. But often the
activists do not get coordinated until the conference is
mostly over, meaning that their time at the meeting is not
used as well as it could be. Not only do they miss important
official sessions, but they lose opportunities for special-
focus dinner meetings and other informal gatherings, where
valuable contacts could be made. [This is a big problem for
everyone at international AIDS conferences, such as the
upcoming August 7-12 1994 meeting in Yokohama, Japan. These
world AIDS gatherings, each with about ten thousand
participants and thousands of meetings and other
presentations packed into five or six days, have
traditionally compounded the information overload problem by
refusing to release much information in advance -- a bit of
"corporate culture" left over from the early days of the
epidemic, and difficult or impossible to change because a
different group in a different country handles the
arrangements each year. We believe that the ultimate solution
is to computerize AIDS teamwork and communication when
possible, making the same information available throughout
the world at all times. For example, conference abstracts and
other presentations should be publicly available by computer
as soon as they are submitted, even before they are refereed.
People will still go to the meetings.]

One partial solution now is for activists (or other groups
with a shared interest) to rent a local voicemail system,
during a conference and for a few days before and after it,
to use as a telephone announcements line. Perhaps five, ten,
or twenty people would be given a code to add messages to the
outgoing announcement; these new messages would instantly be
available to all callers. Everyone interested would be given
a phone number to call to hear the current announcements,
starting with the most recent. They would not need any
instructions for using the system; just call and listen for
what's new, then hang up when you get to the older messages
which you already heard in a previous call. Because the new
messages play first, it's easy to call several times a day to
keep in touch with the latest information.

The same kind of system could also be used permanently in a
city, as an improvement over the "events tapes" which many
organizations have used for years. The problem with most of
the events tapes is that the whole tape has to be re-recorded
in order to make any addition or change to the message. As a
result, the messages are not current, but are likely to be
updated only once a week or so, or at most once a day. With a
voicemail announcement system, anyone authorized to add an
announcement only needs to call it in.

Specifications: What an Announcement System Should Do?

We are now investigating voicemail systems to see which ones
have the features needed for this special use, for example:

* Messages must be added to the outgoing announcement which
anyone can hear -- not to a voice mailbox which only those
with a special code can listen to.

* The announcement must play the most recent additions first
-- so that callers don't have to wait through old news they
have already heard before learning if there is anything new.

* The average caller should not need any special
instructions, and not need to use a voice menu. Just call and
listen -- from any phone, even a rotary-dial phone which
cannot transmit tones to control the equipment.

* A code, such as a four-digit number, will allow only
authorized callers to add messages to the outgoing
announcements; each new announcement must be available
immediately to all subsequent callers. Persons without the
code who learn about something interesting should be able to
leave a message in a voice mailbox (after the outgoing
announcement finishes); those with the code should be able to
hear this message, and to transfer it into the outgoing
announcement if they choose to do so.

* An additional code could be used to keep the entire system
private, if desired. Callers would have to enter this code to
hear the outgoing announcements. (This secrecy could be
discreet, by having the system play a standard announcement
asking callers to leave their message, which would be
recorded as with standard voicemail; only callers who entered
the code during or after this standard outgoing message would
hear the announcements. This avoids making people angry by
having the system hang up on them because they don't have the
code.)

* Multiple phone lines should be available, so that at least
two callers can dial the same number and use the system
simultaneously.

* Callers should be able to skip forward and backwards within
a message, and also to the next/previous message.

* The system administrator should be able to find out how
many people have called, and when. Ideally, the cumulative
number of calls so far should be available at any time by
telephone, through use of a special code. [This master code
should also allow the administrator to assign or change the
codes which allow others to add outgoing announcements -- and
to call in and learn which code was used to add each
announcement. This way, several organizations can share the
responsibility of updating the information; and if a code
gets out and is abused (for example, to add false
announcements), it can be revoked selectively.]

Systems with all these features do exist, or soon will.
Renting a service can start at about $25 per month,
regardless of the number of incoming calls; so operating a
voicemeil announcement line is within the financial reach of
most organizations.

Request for Information

If you can recommend a voicemail system for such use -- or
know how we might find one in Yokohama -- call AIDS TREATMENT
NEWS at 800/TREAT-1-2, or 415/255-0588. We hope to provide
such a system at the Yokohama conference. We are also
considering setting up a permanent system, open to everyone,
in San Francisco.