Business Conference Services

What are appropriate Rules of Order for conference calls?

I am the parliamentarian for an organization's board. We use conference calls for some meetings, as allowed by our by-laws. Roberts Rules of Order recommends adopting special rules of order for conference call meetings, but I can find no examples or guidelines for such rules.

Public Comments

1. i have no idea, but, from experience here is my tip for conference calls: -dont "arrive" to the conference call until 2 minutes before the scheduled time because if you show up earlier than that, you will have to participate in awkward silence or forced awkward small talk.
2. You have to create them based on your own needs. Our rules are Introduce yourself when you log in. Some people have machines that introduce when someone logs on though and they don't need that. Have an agenda sent out before the meeting. Only topics on the agenda are allowed to be covered. Mute button. It's there for a reason--use it. No one realizes how loud that person behind you talking is until you are on a conference call. I've had them come to a halt b/c someone was having another conversation and we could hear talking on the line so everyone was struggling to understand the guy. Finally we realized he was having a completely separate conversation and had not muted the phone. Whatever problems you are having should be addressed. Like some people need to RSVP if they can't make the conference. Some need a rule like no one can talk exclusively for more than 5 minutes. However in my line of work more of hte conference calls are one person talking the whole time. We are just on there to listen to his decisions.