European opportunities for the global speech technology marketplace are the focus for the launch of SpeechTEK Europe in London on 26 & 27 May.
Produced by the publishers of the industry’s best-read magazine, Speech Technology, SpeechTEK Europe is the sister of the highly successful New York annual event series and aims to capitalise on the wealth of speech innovators based here in Europe.
The conference has been developed by a Steering Committee which comprises some of the industry’s most respected thought leaders. Here they share their insights into the future for speech technologies, how they are developing, and where they will be used.
Loquendo’s Vice President of International Sales, Rosanna Duce, predicts that voice control will be a major growth area in the next five years: “One important emerging speech technology is undoubtedly the voice control of all kinds of devices, for example, PDAs, mobile phones, DVD players.” She comments, “These technologies are currently being expanded and upgraded to allow all functions to be accessed using voice, thus eliminating the need to use a keyboard. Consumer demand seems to suggest that the option to dictate text messages will be a major source of growth in this area, as will be the reading of incoming messages by a TTS application bundled with the phone/PDA.”
Nava Shaked, CEO of Business Technologies, agrees: “The combination of voice search engines, internet and mobile is a real opportunity for speech technology growth and influence. This includes the introduction of previously unseen applications for voice user interface and transcription. The combination of voice and video is also promising and will be inevitable in our interaction with multimedia.”
James Larson, the Conference Chair, supports these views: “Multimodal applications on mobile devices will enable customers to not only speak and listen, but to also read and type and use additional modes in interaction. These apps will be easy to learn, easy to use, and much more natural than current voice-only apps or GUI-only apps. They will always be available, and customers can use them wherever they are, not just at their desktop or in their car.” He concludes, “Multimodal applications on mobile devices will dramatically change how we interact with appliances – TV, radio, environmental control – with the internet, and with other people.”
The SpeechTEK Europe conference programme explores these trends and the implications for the industry as a whole. Real world applications and case studies are a particular feature of the event, so delegates can see for themselves how speech is working in a variety of different environments, how to select and implement the technology, and how to evaluate its performance.
The full SpeechTEK Europe programme is available HERE, along with registration information, details of registration savings, and free entry exhibition tickets.
Leading speech synthesis developer, CereProc–recently the subject of global media attention, including coverage on the Oprah Winfrey Show, for their development of a synthetic voice for film critic Roger Ebert–will reveal the latest innovations in speech synthesis at London’s SpeechTEK Europe Conference.
Paul Welham, Cereproc’s Chairman & Chief Executive Officer comments, “There is something special about speech. A person’s voice is not just a means of communicating; it also gives a deep impression of who we are. Humans use their voices to show emotion, persuade, and convince, to calm and to excite. So, what can we do if a person loses the power of speech? The answer lies now with advanced speech synthesis technology.
“Roger Ebert, arguably America’s most famous film critic, lost the ability to speak after a thyroid cancer operation. Although he used speech synthesis available on his PC to communicate, he was deeply frustrated because the voice did not sound like him. Using Roger’s commentaries from DVDs, CereProc created a voice that mimics his original speaking style, including emotional qualities. Roger can now manipulate his own voice again, to alter pronunciation, pitch, intonation, and reflect his personal voice qualities.”
Cereproc are just one of the participants in a Panel Session on New Uses of Text-to-Speech Synthesis on the second day of SpeechTEK Europe.
Other Conference highlights include:
Transport for London on using automated voice technology to help customers make over 24 million trips a day, and how to minimise the impact of technology failures.
Reducing fraud and replacing out-dated methods of authentication with the latest in voice biometric systems.
Will it work in Swahili? Understanding how to design, implement and test multilingual speech applications to work across multiple languages and cultures.
Real world applications: a major UK bank on successful design documentation; and how the ‘phone is being used to report diabetic readings and feedback patients’ conditions.
Cutting edge advances in high definition voice, spontaneous speech, avatars – and how they are improving business performance and competitiveness.
This first-ever SpeechTEK Europe offers a global perspective on speech technology and its future, discussing and showcasing innovations, applications, services and solutions for those considering or already using this powerful range of technologies to improve customer service, increase business performance, and boost the bottom line.
But, whilst development and adoption of speech technology has been rapid, barriers and challenges still remain for the speech industry, and these are also addressed at SpeechTEK Europe.
Caroline Leathem, Interaction Specialist at Verizon comments, “Overcoming the negativity associated with speech automation in contact centre solutions is a major challenge. There are still too many poor designs out there and if we, who understand the limitation of automated voice solutions, are frustrated by an IVR then you can bet your bottom dollar most other people will be. By recognising the importance of interaction design skills, planning regular usability test cycles, and making the technology do the work rather than the caller, we can increase people’s confidence in speech technology as a whole.”
Loquendo’s Rosanna Duce believes more work is needed on usability: “The barriers are that choosing speech technology to solve a business issue – be it entrusting users to a voice-enabled IVR, adopting TTS as the voice of your device, or choosing a voice-dialling application–is still a difficult task and the reason for this is that the ‘usability’ of these applications is not often as ‘user friendly’ as they ought to be.”
Conference Chair, Jim Larson, believes that standards remain an area of concern for the industry–and this will also be on the agenda at SpeechTEK Europe: “Development language standards [are needed] so that applications developed for a mobile device from one manufacturer can be used on devices from other manufacturers. VoiceXML 2.0 achieved this for voice-only applications. VoiceXML 3.0 and related W3C standards will hopefully do this for multimodal applications.”
The full SpeechTEK Europe programme is available HERE, along with registration information, details of registration savings, and free entry exhibition tickets.
So, as we all count down to The Big Dance, check out Conference Chair Jim Larson dishing on some of his personal programme highlights from SpeechTEK Europe.
What are you looking forward to at SpeechTEK Europe 2010?
I believe that speech-enabled multimodal applications are the wave of the future, and so I’m particularly looking forward to Professor Wolfgang Wahlster’s Keynote presentation on research in European universities and company laboratories in the areas of speech, multimodal, and multilingual technologies so I can plan to use these new types of technologies when they become available.
In Developing Multimodal Applications, attendees will learn how to integrate web-based services to create “mashup” applications involving speech, and how to develop multimodal applications on a variety of mobile devices. I believe these approaches will be widely used to deploy speech-enabled multimodal applications that customers can use anywhere, anytime on nearly any device.
In our Panel Session: Advanced Speech Recognition Techniques and Experiences, developers will give first hand experiences about designing, implementing, and deploying call routing applications. I’m looking forward to learning from their successes as well as their mistakes in providing voice-based call routing.
The Using Voice Biometrics Session explains how to identify speakers and verify that speakers are who they claim to be. These promise to help minimise fraud and theft.
The European market place is multilingual, yet most of today’s speech applications only speak and understand a single language. SpeechTEK Europe has two Sessions on developing multilingual speech applications, how to conduct usability tests in multiple languages, and how to deal with cross-cultural attitudes about IVR and speech systems.
Other highlights for me at SpeechTEK Europe are sessions describing challenges in new IVR markets, key directions for unified communications and hosting/premise, and a panel of analysts predicting the future of speech in Europe.
The questions about SpeechTEK Europe never stop around The Home Office. My Speech Brother Eric B. and I must field about 100 calls everyday:
What’s up with SpeechTEK University? What’s the deal with Conference Sessions? What do I need to know about Keynotes? What should I do with the precious moments of my one and only life? What’s poppin’ with Customer Case Studies?
SpeechTEK Europe is right around the corner and we here at Speech Tech Blog are pleased to announce the event’s 2010 Keynote Speakers. So, check out this year’s program, register today and make note of this powerhouse lineup:
Listening to Your Customers: How Companies can Mobilise Consumers as Co-creators and Innovators
Strategist, government advisor and innovator, Charlie Leadbeater, on the phenomenon of social media creativity and the importance of customer communication and relationships.
CEO of the German Research Center for AI, and Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University, Professor Wolfgang Wahlster on the latest research findings in speech, multimodal, and multilingual technologies, and what’s about to hit the market.
If you are anything like my Speech Brother Eric B., you’re freaking out about the details of SpeechTEK Europe. Well, here’s a quick Sneak Peak.
Although the program for is not yet in print yet, we here at Speech Tech Blog would like to offer up a preview. To reserve your personal copy of the program, click here.
For users, SpeechTEK Europe will provide you with answer these questions/provide you with the the goods on:
The future of speech in Europe.
How to move into new markets.
Can voice biometrics really validate users?
Does advanced speech recognition work, and at what cost?
How can analytics improve your understanding of what your customers are doing?
Should you run your speech applications on your own servers, or have them hosted by a hosting company?
How will evolving standards affect the development of new applications?
For developers, SpeechTEK Europe will answer these questions/deliver you with information about:
How to use voice biometrics
How to design and implement multimodal applications
How to manage speech recognition errors
How will unified communications affect your enterprise?
How to test and fine-tune speech applications
What are new uses of text-to-speech synthesis?
What are the latest technology advances in speech technologies?
Adam B. —
March 30, 2010 @ 9:00 am 
Hey Speech-Heads:
Hey Speech-Heads:
The questions about 
OK Speech-Heads,
Strategist, government advisor and innovator, Charlie Leadbeater, on the phenomenon of social media creativity and the importance of customer communication and relationships.
CEO of the German Research Center for AI, and Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University, Professor Wolfgang Wahlster on the latest research findings in speech, multimodal, and multilingual technologies, and what’s about to hit the market.
Hey Speech-Heads,
Hey Speech-Heads,