I think there are four recurring mistakes that cause these comical situations. Two are technical and two are social.
The first technical mistake is using communications tools with built-in latency: e-mail instead of IM/IRC, conference call that everyone must dial into at a specific time instead of starting with at least two people on a call and calling others to join in real time. E-mail and scheduled dial-in conference calls must be just about the least efficient methods of professional communication ever invented.
The other technical mistake is not having software for remote communications, particularly desktop sharing/presentations, that is readily available at the click of a mouse and familiar enough for all participants to set it up in moments. (A related mistake is using a dial-in conference service that isn't actually reliable. If you can't find one that works as it's supposed to -- and a lot of them don't, IME -- then you can at least ask someone to spend a bit of time and money installing an in-house solution if you need this facility often.)
The first social mistake is allowing one person's lack of preparation to waste time for everyone in the group. There is no excuse for coming to multiple people and asking them to set up a call to discuss a bug when you don't know the bug number, nor for them not to have the details in front of them when joining the call. It's basic good practice for any meeting that everyone know in advance who will be attending, why, and what the goals of the meeting are, that someone lead the meeting efficiently, and that the results be circulated promptly afterwards. If you get to the scale where you have to involve multiple people at the same time, failing to do these things will almost inevitably waste time, and again it will often be the whole group's time while one individual sorts out something they should have done earlier.
The second social mistake is being accepting of people who are late when a large meeting has been scheduled. Whenever possible, the meeting should start precisely on-time, and should not deviate from the published agenda to bring latecomers up to speed. If they miss out, it's their job to catch up afterwards, not the entire group's job to spin its wheels while someone recaps. If key people are consistently late and wasting others' time in this way, that is a serious management issue and someone needs to address why it is happening. Otherwise, you get to having a dozen people on the call, and if one key person is 10 minutes late because they were "just finishing an e-mail" then you've found another way to turn 10 minutes into two hours...
The first technical mistake is using communications tools with built-in latency: e-mail instead of IM/IRC, conference call that everyone must dial into at a specific time instead of starting with at least two people on a call and calling others to join in real time. E-mail and scheduled dial-in conference calls must be just about the least efficient methods of professional communication ever invented.
The other technical mistake is not having software for remote communications, particularly desktop sharing/presentations, that is readily available at the click of a mouse and familiar enough for all participants to set it up in moments. (A related mistake is using a dial-in conference service that isn't actually reliable. If you can't find one that works as it's supposed to -- and a lot of them don't, IME -- then you can at least ask someone to spend a bit of time and money installing an in-house solution if you need this facility often.)
The first social mistake is allowing one person's lack of preparation to waste time for everyone in the group. There is no excuse for coming to multiple people and asking them to set up a call to discuss a bug when you don't know the bug number, nor for them not to have the details in front of them when joining the call. It's basic good practice for any meeting that everyone know in advance who will be attending, why, and what the goals of the meeting are, that someone lead the meeting efficiently, and that the results be circulated promptly afterwards. If you get to the scale where you have to involve multiple people at the same time, failing to do these things will almost inevitably waste time, and again it will often be the whole group's time while one individual sorts out something they should have done earlier.
The second social mistake is being accepting of people who are late when a large meeting has been scheduled. Whenever possible, the meeting should start precisely on-time, and should not deviate from the published agenda to bring latecomers up to speed. If they miss out, it's their job to catch up afterwards, not the entire group's job to spin its wheels while someone recaps. If key people are consistently late and wasting others' time in this way, that is a serious management issue and someone needs to address why it is happening. Otherwise, you get to having a dozen people on the call, and if one key person is 10 minutes late because they were "just finishing an e-mail" then you've found another way to turn 10 minutes into two hours...