Spent my Tuesday this week as a client in my own company as a delegate at a Unified Communications event run by IDC and HP at the wonderful Gallery.
Lots of talk about video conferencing, which wasn't too much of a surprise as Tandberg were also sponsors. What it's made me realise is the extent to which real-time communications technologies (and all of the business social networking stuff as well) is about trying to change behviours and culture, and how the IT industry is uniquely placed to be rubbish at that.
The whole history of information systems is pretty much the history of Taylorist reinvention of white-collar work as process-driven automation. Where IT has “worked”, it has mostly been as a result of taking nebulous (or non-existent) working practices and embedded rigorous, repeatable processes. And, of course, the dirty secret of the IT industry is that there are very, very few examples of these successes that have been clearly documented.
The other side of the coin is where IT has attempted to provide services that change the way people act and interact on the softer end of the spectrum. The telephone has been reasonably successful. Email a disaster. And video conferencing, despite being around for 40+ years, is still not working (and neither are video phones despite the fact that many of you will have a camera pointing at your ear every time you use your mobile phone).
Why the lack of success? Well, because behaviour and culture change is really hard. And even harder for an industry that is steeped in the logical histories of science, engineering and business process.
Interestingly, at questions on Tuesday's meeting a chap from the BBC asked about how to successfully change behaviours, and the hard response from the vendors was a uniform “Well, that's your problem. But it will help if you invest lots of money in out technology.” How depressingly unsurprising…
mmitII 