Users? What Users?
Recently I examined the 2010 program of VoiceCon, the major industry conference, and found two sessions that had user representation. Everything else in the program, without exception, had either a vendor or an analyst/consultant as the speaker, panelist or moderator. This doesn’t imply that the event lacks important material and guidance of value to the CIO, CTO, IT manager and other “users”. Not in the least, quite the contrary. However, the lack of users in lead roles got me thinking. Where are the users and potential users of UC and related advanced communications technologies in the mix? Is the voice of the user heard at all in forums focused on solutions for the user? What are user needs and who are they telling about it? What lessons learned can they share with their peers, suppliers and other interested parties? What information would they like from other users and the vendor community? My observation is that much of this dialog doesn’t happen.
Back in the day, there were numerous "user forums" in computing and telecommunications. Users, then as now, were interested in learning from others about new technologies/solutions and their operational, organizational and business implications. Vendors, of course, showed up to explain their offerings and seek prospects, but they also spent time to listen to the users. Granted, I’m somewhat biased on this subject. I launched a Washington Area Voice over Data Users Group in 1999 as an outcome of a PBX2000 (the precursor to VoiceCon) presentation on converged communication potential in the agency I was with at the time. We met for a couple of years and fortunately got good support from a number of major vendors and from government and private sector organizations in the D.C. area. Later, in 2005, I assisted the CTO of a major federal agency in preparing a VoiceCon presentation on migration to an agency-wide VoIP solution.
Hence even though it’s not particularly easy to get “users”, be they from IT or from other key decision-making units of the enterprise or organization, to step up to the plate and present or participate in a broad-based telecom forum, it can indeed be done. It certainly is done today within the narrower context of (a) vendor-specific user groups, and, (b) industry or special interest user organizations. Most large vendors have some sort of affiliated user group which is a fine venue for all manner of interchange between users currently using or planning to use that vendor’s products. However, these groups obviously cannot accommodate those users (the majority) shopping around and seeking solutions from available sources in the industry. Additionally, by their very nature and scope, these groups can only minimally address multivendor, multimedia infrastructures which are prevalent in converged/UC deployments. As for industry-specific and other special-interest organizations they can provide informative vendor-neutral user insights and experience on advanced solutions like UC. An outstanding example is ACUTA (www.acuta.org) which is for college and university telecom professionals (check out their April conference if you’ve got a minute). But by definition, their user scope is limited to what it is.
The need for broad-based user forums is amplified further by the apparently never-ending deluge of new communications technology solutions in UC and related areas. How are these solutions to be demystified and described in terms for the CIO, CTO, CFO, or even, CEO? How (and by whom) can this be done in a vendor-agnostic manner?
The requirement for a strong user voice won’t go away. Seems like an interesting dilemma because generally the goal of industry meetings is to be profitable (which comes from vendor sponsorships and attendee fees) not to serve the common good for its own sake. Perhaps a near-term answer is to aggressively seek and add more user dialog and interchange to established events such as VoiceCon. What do you think? How do we get users to participate and provide input?