Last week’s newsletter got things cooking over on No Jitter (http://www.nojitter.com ), because my description of the concept of Human latency really didn’t do justice to the concept the way that (as it turns out) most people see it. In an entry at NoJitter.com, Brent Kelly sums it up this way: “Human latency is not the time it takes to change communication channels, it is the delay in a business process that results when human interaction or intervention is required.” Marty Parker offers something very similar: “Human latency is the time that a business process is pending or delayed while waiting for the humans who are required to act on the process. The important thing to the enterprise and to the enterprise’s customers or constituents is that the process be completed.”

On No Jitter this week, Zeus Kerravala makes some valid points about the whole “human latency” issue around Unified Communications (see “Mobile Unified Communications Provides More Bang For The Buck Than On The Desktop”). Essentially, Zeus says that at least when it comes to landline communications (as opposed to when we’re mobile), most of us have developed pretty effective workarounds for the human latency in our communications routines, so that it’s really not as inefficient to work in separate media as the UC marketers make it out to be.

As we’ve begun discussing the program for November’s VoiceCon San Francisco conference, Fred Knight and I have been looking for ways we can program sessions around the issue of communications’ role in saving energy. To get the obvious point out of the way: This isn’t about saving the planet. There may be some specific corporate directives around “Green” initiatives whose aim is corporate image-building, but what we’re talking about here is the immediate and long-term effects that high and rising energy prices will have on enterprise IT systems and human behavior.

This issue of VoiceCon Enews is sponsored by VoiceCon San Francisco:
There has never been a better time for enterprise decision-makers to register for VoiceCon San Francisco 2008, to be held November 10-13, 2008, at the Moscone North Convention Center. The migration from standalone TDM voice networks to IP Telephony, converged networks and Unified Communications continues, [...]

This issue of VoiceCon Enews is sponsored by BCR Training:
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Introduction to Telecom: Voice, Data and Video
DataComm I: Understanding IP Networks for Data and VOIP
DataComm II: Switching & Routing Technologies for Converged Networks
Voice over IP and IP Telephony
VOIP II: Deploying and Best Practices in the [...]