Nortel Unified Communications Summit, Grapevine, Texas--Add "Dessert is mightier than the IP phone" to your list of technology clichés.
Pierre-Eric Belzile is the Executive Director for ICT for the "Club de Hockey Canadien, Inc."--in English, the legendary Montreal Canadians. Speaking for the wonders of hypertechnology and Nortel products, Belzile noted not all technological solutions are surefire winners. Sophisticated video replay products didn't catch on in the executive "Skybox" suites and a fancy IP phone with touch-screen was a non-starter before the puck hit the ice.
"They're saying, ‘Look, you have a menu [on the screen], you can order dessert on the phone,'" Belzile commented. "People aren't going to order dessert on the phone. You have the dessert cart, you have these huge cakes, they wheel it in, you have the kids running around the cart ... it's an experience you're not going to get on the phone. Maybe we'll do IP phones in the future [in the executive skyboxes], but we'll do it when it makes sense."
Related issues/events:
No dessert cart, but Fierce is having a UC Event at NXTcomm [1]
Links:
[1] http://www.fierceenterprisecommunications.com/UC