Lifehack lets busy workers tune out of conference calls

Say What? helps users multitask during big conference calls and receive a ping anytime their name is mentioned.

It can be hard to pay attention in a conference call, especially for employees with other work to be getting on with. Now, Josh Newlan, an employee of Splunk has created a genius lifehack, named Say What?, which enables the listener to zone out of the call and receive a ping on hipchat anytime their name is mentioned, so they can jump back on.

The program, which Newlan has shared on Github, uses IBM’s speech-to-text Watston API to convert audio to text in real-time. To begin, the employee begins the conference call as normal and runs Say What? Then, as the call continues the worker is free to zone out. When their name is spoken, they receive a ping as well as the transcript of what was said in the preceding minute and the minute after. Plus, 15 seconds after their name is mentioned the program plays a recording of their voice saying ‘Sorry, I didn’t realize my mic was on mute there.’

How could this hack be used to make other work environments more productive?