March 10 - 12, 2008 San Diego, CA

San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina www.VoiceSearchConference.com

Primary Sponsors

Caller Experience Analytics Supporting Another Innovative Solution From BBN Technologies Sponsors Welcome to the inaugural Voice Search Conference. hank you for helping to move this can simplify user interfaces and accelerate Tfundamental development forward. the adoption of many creative products and Voice Search leverages advances in speech services. Our many sponsors agree and have technology to make applications and services made it easier for us to deliver a top-notch easier to use. Th e basic Voice Search principle user experience for att endees. We hope you is to reduce complexity and the number agree. of steps that a user must take to achieve an objective. Enjoy the conference! Th e program committ ee: Our guiding principle in producing this Bill Meisel, President, TMA Associates conference is to reduce the number of steps K.W. “Bill” Scholz, President, AVIOS, and you need take to make the most of this President, NewSpeech LLC development in advancing your business. Tom Schalk, Vice President, Voice Tech- Our objective has been to draw together nology, ATX Group experts and practical examples of what is being done and what can be done in applying Voice Search. We believe that Voice Search

AVIOS Board of Directors Sara Basson, Program Director - Human Alexander Rudnicky, Principal Systems Ability, IBM - T.J. Watson Research Scientist, Carnegie Mellon University Center Th omas Schalk, Vice President, Voice Neal Bernstein, Senior Director, Local & Technology, ATX Group, Inc. Mobile Search, Microsoft K.W. “Bill” Scholz, President, AVIOS, and Michael Cohen, Manager, Speech Tech- President, NewSpeech LLC nology Group, Google Markett a Silvera, Chief Executive Offi cer, Susan Hura, Principal, SpeechUsability Apptera Alan Knipe, Founder, StarNet Systems Kim Silverman, Manager, Spoken Lan- James Larson, Columnist, Information guage Technologies, Apple Computer Today, Inc. Nava Shaked, CRM & CC Practice Leader, John Oberteuff er, Chairman Advisory Global Business Services, IBM Israel Committ ee, Fonix Michael Wehrs, Vice President Evangelism Ron Owens, Director Multimedia Applica- & Industry Aff airs, Nuance tions PSO, Nortel Matt Yuschik, Human Factors Specialist, Bruce Pollock, Vice President, Profes- Convergys Corporation sional Services, West Corporation Patt i Price, Principal, PPRICE Speech and Language Conference organizers Th e new Voice Search Conference is AVIOS is a not-for-profi t educational organized by Applied Voice Input Output organization founded in 1981. For many Society (AVIOS), the non-profi t educational years, the AVIOS annual conference was organization; and Bill Meisel, president, the only forum dedicated to practical TMA Associates, and Editor, Speech applications of advanced speech Strategy News. Th e organizers’ deep and technology. Most recently, long experience in practical applications AVIOS helped organize and business of speech technology—as well content for other conferences, as delivering successful conferences—is and now has launched the Voice refl ected in the program. Search Conference. As a bonus, att endees to the conference receive Bill Meisel’s TMA Associates publishes AVIOS membership and benefi ts. See www. Speech Strategy News, a paid-subscription, avios.org for more information. no-ads business newslett er writt en by Meisel. Bill also provides consulting services and other resources for businesses impacted by voice search and the maturing of speech recognition, text- to-speech, speaker verifi cation, and other advanced speech technologies. See www. tmaa.com for more information. Conference at-a-glance For program updates & further details, see www.voicesearchconference.com

7:30 am Continental Breakfast Marina Ballroom Foyer 8:15 K1: Keynote panel: Welcome and introduction to the AVT Seminar Marina G 8:20 − K2: Keynote panel: What is diff erent about Voice Search technology (and what isn’t) 9:20 Marina G AVIOS Applied Voice Technology Seminar Demonstration Derby (Marina G) (Marina F) 9:30 − A102: Delivering high-volume Voice Search applications B102: Directory assistance 10:30 10:30 Break 11:00 − A103: Dealing with unstructured searches B103: Contact center automation & analytics 12:30 12:30 pm Lunch 1:30 − A104: Th e Voice User Interface in Voice Search B104: Local & general mobile search Monday, March 10 March Monday, 2:30 2:45 − A105: Standards & multimodality B105: Innovative speech technology 3:45 3:45 Break sponsored by LNTS 4:00 − A106: Special topics in Voice Search B106: Supporting speech technology 5:15 5:15 Wine & cheese reception and AVIOS Student Application Contest Awards Ceremony

7:30 am Continental Breakfast Marina Ballroom Foyer 8:00 K3: Keynote panel: Conference introduction: Why we’re here Marina G 8:15 − K4: Keynote panel: How big is the Voice Search opportunity & how high the hurdles? 9:30 Marina G Applications, strategy, business models, & Call Center automation & Unifi ed Design strategies, tools, & delivery platforms

1 marketing Communications

1 (Coronado) () () Wednesday, March 12 Tuesday, March 1 4:30 3:15 − 3:00 3:00 1:45 − 12:30 pm 12:30 11:15 − 11:00 11:00 9:45 − 7:00 5:15 4:00 − 3:45 3:45 2:45 − 2:30 1:30 − 12:30 pm 12:15 11:15 − 11:00 11:00 9:45 − 9:30 8:00 − 7:30 am 31 peh&mblt 31 ovrigviealt etC301:Improving theuserexperience C303:Managing communications Marina G K6: Closing debate: we should take Lessons from the conference (Panel) Break B303: “Personal &avatar assistant” services B301:Converting voicemail to text ofautomation support A303: Agent inservices Lunch Search II ofVoiceA302: Applications Break A301: Speech &mobility Marina Ballroom Foyer Continental Breakfast sponsored byVoice Compass Marina G K5: Keynotepanel: contact centers How evolve intheVoice will Search era? 25 eieigrlvn d B205:Voice Outsourcing thevoice hosting: Casino Night and Dinnersponsored Nuance, by Call vlingo, Genie, IBM, and VoiceBox Technologies A205: Delivering relevant ads B204:Th C203:Infrastructure forcontact centers Break sponsored byCallMiner C201:Th Search &Local Assistance A204: Directory platform B202:Delivery B203:Dialogstrategies forVoice Search A203: Searching sources audio/video ontheWeb Lunch sponsored byLumenVox Coronado Terrace B201:Multimodal userinterfaces ofVoiceA202: Applications Search I Break sponsored byTalkHouse inVoiceA201: Business models Search Applications, strategy,Applications, businessmodels, & (Marina G) ( Marina G marketing ) B302: International & multilingual services C302: Agents &automation C302:Agents B302: International services &multilingual infrastructure orapplicationinfrastructure e role of standards C204: Supporting mobile devices in call center incall devices mobile C204: Supporting erole ofstandards Dimensions ofvoice search (Coronado) (Coronado) options C202: Customer-friendly call center C202:Customer-friendly call applications options applications centerson call C205: Speech analytics forbusinessintelligenceC205: Speech analytics to Voice Search Call Center automation &Unifi eimpact ofVoice Search ads &mobile Communications (Marina F) ( Marina F ) ed adapting adapting Principal Sponsors

and collaboration for the globally-integrated enterprise. IBM shares its speech soft ware with clients and partners, providing intel- www.callgenie.com lectual property, engineering expertise and Call Genie, Inc. is a leading provider of en- design services to improve their products and hanced Voice-enabled Mobile Local (“VoMo- solutions. Lo”) search products and services to Wireless Carriers, Directory Assistance providers, and Yellow Pages publishers. Off ered as a turn- key or ASP solution, Call Genie’s Enhanced Voice Directory (EVD™) platform enables companies to off er a comprehensive, voice- enabled business category search service to www.nuance.com consumers and business customers. EVD™ is Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: network, handset and location independent, NUAN) is a leading provider of speech and and can be incorporated into any existing imaging solutions for businesses and con- DA service or deployed as a stand-alone of- sumers around the world. Its technologies, fering. Call Genie won the 2006 Yellow Page applications, and services make the user ex- Association Industry Excellence Award for perience more compelling by transforming Marketing Innovation in North America, the the way people interact with information and 2006 Whitaker Innovation Award in Europe, how they create, share, and use documents. and the 2006 118 Tracker Award for Technol- Every day, millions of users and thousands of ogy Innovation in the UK. businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com. www.ibm.com As a pioneer in speech recognition technology, IBM is focused on taking this technology to the various touchpoints of an increas- www.vlingo.com ingly mobile world. You will fi nd IBM speech Vlingo Corporation delivers a voice-pow- soft ware enhancing the driver’s experience ered interface for mobile phones. Leveraging including features like the control of the car a new technology called adaptive Hierarchical radio and the navigation system. IBM soft - Language Models (HLMs), vlingo’s approach ware, hardware, and services are transforming allows carriers and mobile application provid- healthcare delivery, helping children learn to ers to quickly and inexpensively voice-enable read, providing improved customer service any application – without custom engineer- and new business insight through self service ing or in-house speech expertise. Unlike con- and deep analytics. IBM is combining speech ventional voice recognition technologies that and translation technologies with services to require individual purpose-built applications provide solutions that remove the language and rely on constrained grammars and script- barrier to allow people to communicate in ed interactions, vlingo’s open approach elimi- foreign countries and to expand commerce nates a costly and intensive manual eff ort and

6 Voice Search Conference 2008 Supporting Sponsors scales to tasks as broad as open mobile search. As a result, consumers get quick, easy and ac- www.bbn.com/avoke curate access to mobile applications, which AVOKE Caller Experience Analytics from translates into new revenue streams. BBN Technologies reveal both why customers call and how to serve them more eff ectively. Using a patented network architecture, AVOKE Analytics capture the entire contact process from dialing to hang-up without any new soft ware or integration. Sophisticated recognition technologies map the caller’s entire experience through voice applications, www.voicebox.com queues & agents. Th e result is real-time in- VoiceBox develops Conversational Voice sight into caller experience — and visibility of Search soft ware that lets people search, navi- the highest impact opportunities to improve gate and discover content and services … caller satisfaction, increase sales, and reduce simply by using natural, free-form language. costs. BBN Technologies has over 30 years of Commitment to speech innovation drives the experience in speech technology and applica- VoiceBox vision: to make conversational voice tions. BBN developed the fi rst large vocabu- search the de facto intuitive interface that will lary speaker independent speech recognizer, give people anywhere-anytime access to what the fi rst natural language call router, and the they need. Incorporated in 2001, the pri- fi rst automated directory assistance applica- vately held company’s patent-pending voice tion. BBN is the largest recipient of federal search processes are applied across telematics research funding for speech recognition and and infotainment, music and entertainment, language processing and maintains the largest navigation, mobile and VoIP markets. Visit speech research team with over 100 full-time www.voicebox.com. scientists and developers.

www.convergys.com Convergys Corporation is a global leader in customer relationship management. We combine a legacy of contact center experience with forward-looking technology to create automation that improves the customer experience. Our portfolio includes consulting and professional services to develop, implement and optimize multi-channel, agent-mediated or self-care solutions.

Voice Search Conference 2008 7 Supporting Sponsors

government and commercial enterprises, in industries such as Healthcare, Insurance, Financial Services, Technology, Media Cre- ation and Aggregation, Telecommunications and Outsourcing, to leverage untapped information previously locked away in audio-video www.genesyslab.com content. Based on years of research and devel- Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is 100 opment, Nexidia’s phonetic engine is the only percent focused on soft ware for customer technology that allows the user to search on interactions. Genesys provides an integrated proper names, places, industry terms and jar- soft ware suite for dynamic environments, gon without extensive training and cumber- automatically adjusting to balance corporate some dictionaries. Th e process is adaptable to resources, marketing goals, and customer a range of audio analyses and excels across the needs. With 3,300 enterprise customers full spectrum of audio quality. in 80 countries, Genesys directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day. Genesys helps stop customer frustration, drive effi ciency, and accelerate business innovation. www.novauris.com Novauris’s core speech recognition/search technology off ers unparalleled speed and ac- curacy for large-scale client-server and embedded voice mobile search applications. It www.loquendo.com can, for example, recognize within a few sec- With over 30 years’ speech technology ex- onds any US street address spoken as a sin- perience, Loquendo is the leading innovator gle input. In Verizon Wireless’s Get It Now® in automatic speech recognition and speech Search — the world’s largest deployment of synthesis - providing a complete range of multimodal mobile search — it provides mil- technologies for server, embedded and lions of users with voice access to the million- desktop solutions. Currently available in 21 item V CASTSM Music/Get It Now catalog, languages with 51 voices, Loquendo’s best- including MP3 tracks, ringtones, games, etc. in-breed technologies guarantee integrators enhanced customer satisfaction at greatly re- duced costs.

www.westinteractive.com West Interactive is a world-class provider of www.nexidia.com automated customer contact solutions. We Nexidia is the market-leading provider combine advanced touch-tone and speech of highly scalable and accurate rich me- recognition technologies, with a highly scal- dia search and speech analytics soft ware. able standards-based infrastructure, to help By transforming audio and video data into companies more eff ectively conduct multi- business intelligence, Nexidia allows both media transactions. Our hosted and managed

8 Voice Search Conference 2008

solutions are designed to help our clients connect with their customers, deliver supe- rior service and maximize the value of every customer interaction. Services include cus- www.tmaa.com tom speech applications, automated notifi ca- Speech Strategy News is a no-ads, paid-sub- tions, customer surveys, virtual call routing scription newslett er that provides compre- and Professional Services. hensive coverage of products and services made possible by speech recognition and Media/Analyst Sponsors other advanced speech technologies. Writ- ten by Bill Meisel with a guest VUI Visions column and interviews, the newslett er saves time and provides insights for professionals involved with using and developing such applications and services. See www.tmaa.com for more information. www.gomonews.com GoMo News provides edgy wireless news on mobile search, social networking, commu- nity, advertising, and recommendation developments around the globe. Th e ambitious speechtechmag.com online media is analytical and addictive read- Speech Technology Magazine is recog- ing for anyone in the mobile Web 2.0 space. nized worldwide as the leading source of Brandished on mobile operator intranets, news, information and analysis relating to the soaring readership and strong commentary speech technology industry. It also provides makes GoMo News defi nitive reading. Please the same information and analysis through contact us at [email protected]. online communities at www.speechtechmag. com and www.speechtek.com and with opt- in electronic distribution networks, STM eWeekly, Event News and SpeechSource. Th e Speech Technology print edition is available localmobilesearch.net FREE to qualifi ed subscribers in the U.S. and Local Mobile Search captures the emerging the digital edition is FREE to all qualifi ed opportunities created when wireless, real- subscribers. Subscribe today at www.speech- time communications and content delivery techmag.com/subscribe. are aligned with location-targeted advertising and transactions. Search initiates relevant content discovery and mobility extends the Web-based experience into the dynamic need-it-now environment of wireless. Geo- targeting creates value for both advertisers and communities of users. For more information, see www.localmobilesearch.net.

Voice Search Conference 2008 9 Mon., March 10 Schedule Continental Breakfast session will address how delivery platforms 7:30 am can support this double burden without un- Marina Ballroom Foyer acceptable latency.

K1: Welcome and introduction to the Moderator: Sara Basson, Program Direc- tor - Human Ability, IBM - T.J. Watson Conference Research Center 8:15 am Marina G Distributed Approaches to Voice Search, Christopher Bader, Founder, Kratylos K2: What is diff erent about voice search Technologies technology (and what isn’t)? Extending Production Speech Experience 8:20 am Marina G to Voice Search Applications, Valentine Matula, Director, Multimedia Research, Expert panelists will debate key questions Avaya Inc. defi ning Voice Search technology, including: What characterizes Voice Search applications B102: Directory assistance from a technical point of view? Does Voice 9:30 am Marina F Search make demands on speech technology diff erent from other applications? How Directory assistance can be provided at lower well can we handle Voice Search now, and cost — even free with ad support — when it how will the technology evolve? Do we need can be partially or fully automated. Th is ses- diff erent development tools and/or delivery sion provides a comparison of how various platforms? services handle the demands of a challenging application, including variations in the way Moderator: K. W. ‘Bill’ Scholz, Speech callers ask for information. Some demonstra- Technology Consultant, tions will include the expansion of DA into NewSpeech LLC providing additional information — a voice Mike Phillips, Co-Founder & Chief Tech- portal. nical Offi cer, Vlingo Yoon Kim, Chief Executive Offi cer, Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, NovaurisTechnologies Voice Technology, ATX Group Alex Rudnicky, Principal Systems Using Voice to Find ‘Where’, Garry Galin- Scientist, School of Computer Science, sky, Product Manager, Call Genie Carnegie Mellon University Th e Directory Assistance Puzzle — Free vs. Jordan Cohen, Senior Scientist, SRI Paid, Susan Wilson, Business Director, International DA Services, Nuance Communications Voice Search: Going Beyond 411, Laura A102: Delivering high-volume voice Marino, Group Program Manager, search applications Tellme, A Microsoft Subsidiary 9:30 am Marina G Break Voice Search applications oft en use large 10:30 am grammars or statistical language models, which can be computationally demanding. At the same time, most Voice Search applications are targeting high-volume use. Th is 10 Voice Search Conference 2008

A103: Dealing with unstructured Preference Management: Enabling Cus- searches tomer to Choose How and When Th ey 11:00 am Marina G Want to be Contacted, Rhonda Gibler, Vice President, Sales, West Interactive Many Voice Search applications provide voice Real-Time Process Insights, No Soft ware, access to large databases, such as business di- Pat Peterson, Chief Technical Offi cer, rectories, street addresses, or songs. Users are Caller Experience Analytics, BBN Tech- not guided by a menu, so the spoken form nologies of requests can vary widely. Th is session ad- Eff ective Call Center Automation and dresses technologies oriented toward han- Agent Support, Paul Watson, General dling long lists and unstructured (“natural- Manager, Multi-Channel Self-Care Solu- language”) requests. tions, Convergys Th e Platinum Rule: Treat your Customers Moderator: Alexander Rudnicky, Prin- how THEY want to be treated, Jeff Wiles, cipal Systems Scientist, Carnegie Mellon Regional Manager, Voice Application University Solutions Team, Genesys Labs Search Using Meta Data, Jim Larson, Col- umnist, Information Today, Inc. Lunch Th e Power Beneath, Judith Markowitz, 12:30 pm Sea View Room President, J. Markowitz, Consultants Adaptive HLMs: Th e Next Generation A104: Th e Voice User Interface in Voice of Language Modeling, Mike Phillips, Search Co-Founder & Chief Technical Offi cer, 1:30 pm Marina G vlingo Th e Voice User Interface — dialog design B103: Contact center automation and — for Voice Search can seem simple on the analytics surface — just say what you want. But this 11:00 am Marina F freedom can also create ambiguity. Th is session discusses issues in dialog design for clari- Th is session emphasizes what contact cen- fying ambiguities, as well as other VUI issues ters can do to improve customer satisfaction that can develop as voice search evolves into a through speech analytics and to adjust to the personal-assistant model, raising high expec- higher volume of calls generated by voice tations as it handles more functions. business directories and generated by ads in voice search services. Moderator: Susan Hura, Principal, SpeechUsability Moderator: Susan Hura, Principal, People Say the Darnedest Th ings, Charles SpeechUsability Galles, Speech Solutions Architect, Never Miss a Word - 100% Audio Analysis Intervoice, Inc. in the Contact Center, Brian Spraetz, Multimodal Search Finally Delivers the Solutions Consultant, NICE Systems Mobile Web, Igor Jablokov, Chief Execu- Speech Analytics for Business Intelligence, tive Offi cer, Yap, Inc. Anna Convery, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Management, Nexidia

Voice Search Conference 2008 11 Mon., March 10 Schedule B104: Local and general mobile search B105: Innovative Speech Technology 1:30 pm Marina F 2:45 pm Marina F

Location-based services are particularly ap- Voice search is possible because of improve- plicable to mobile users. Local search can be a ments in speech technology. Th is session de- part of a more general “Web search” by voice, scribes some innovative off erings, including and even take advantage of built-in device text-to-speech synthesis, long-list speech rec- functions such as GPS and contact lists. ognition, unstructured speech recognition, and more. Moderator: John Oberteuff er, Chairman Advisory Committ ee, Fonix Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, Grammar Free Voice Search for Mobile Voice Technology, ATX Group Environments, Joe Woelfel, Founder & True Phonemic-Based Speech Recogni- Chief Techhnical Offi cer, Talkhouse tion, Gad Oren, Chief Executive Offi cer Voice User Interfaces—Unlocking Data & Chief Technical Offi cer, LNTS-Lin- Service on Mobile Phones, John Elliott , guistech Solutions LTD Vice President, Sales, vlingo Single-Input Voice Search for Mobile — VoiceBox Voice Search: Th e Problem of Over a Network, or Locally on a Device, the Interface is Defeated! Now Comes Yoon Kim, Chief Executive Offi cer, the Next Frontier: Voice Search Services, Novauris Technologies; Melvyn Hunt, Tom Freeman, Senior Vice President, Co-Founder, Joint Managing Director, Sales, VoiceBox Novauris Technologies Tuning Speech Applications for Success, A105: Standards and multimodality Gerd Graumann, Director, Business 2:45 pm Marina G Development, LumenVox Naturalness and Expressivity, Effi ciency Voice Search is oft en a multimodal solution, & Flexibility in Text To Speech, Monica sometimes delivering results as text, for ex- Bisacca, Area Manager, International ample. Th is session will address how plat- Sales, Loquendo forms can support this multimodality and what role standards such as VoiceXML 3.0 Break Sponsored by LNTS and State Chart XML play. 3:45 pm

Moderator: James Larson, Columnist, A106: Special topics in Voice Search Information Today, Inc. 4:00 pm Marina G Prime III: A Multimodal Approach to Electronic Voting, Juan Gilbert, T-SYS Not every relevant talk can fi t into a neat cat- Distinguished Associate Professor, Au- egory. We’ve made room in this session for burn University some intriguing and challenging subjects and New W3C Standards For Speech and Mul- ideas that we couldn’t fi t in other sessions. timodal Applications, Deborah Dahl, Principal, Conversational Technologies Moderator: Matt Yuschik, Human Factors Specialist, Convergys Corporation Reduce Application Cost of Ownership with Conversational Dialogue, Peter

12 Voice Search Conference 2008

Trompett er, Vice President, Global Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, Development, GyrusLogic, Inc. Voice Technology, ATX Group Speech Recognition at the Phonetic Level, Multilingual Mobile Collaboration, David Gad Oren, Chief Executive Offi cer & Lubensky, Department Head, Conversa- Chief Technical Offi cer, LNTS-Lin- tional Solutions, IBM Research guistech Solutions LTD Small Array Microphone, the Enabler of Speech Compression for ASRs in Voice Voice Search, Hans Wang, Vice Presi- Search Applications, Veeru Ramaswamy, dent, Marketing, Fortemedia Chief Technical Offi cer, Vianix Th e Need for Designer Speech Synthesis, Speech and Translation, a Very Compelling Paul Welham, Chief Executive Offi cer, Partnership, David Brigida, Business CereProc Ltd Development Executive, Application In- SVOX Mobile: Meeting and Exceeding novation, IBM Your Quality Expectations in Over 30 Languages, Volker Jantzen, Chief Execu- B106: Supporting speech technology tive Offi cer, SVOX AG 4:00 pm Marina F Voice Separation Technology Demo from Step Labs, Michael Hickerson, Presi- Underlying this all is speech technology ori- dent, Step Labs ented toward supporting voice search applications. Hear more high-quality text-to-speech Wine & Cheese Reception and synthesis and other technologies that are part AVIOS Student Application Contest of eff ective voice search. Awards Ceremony 5:15 pm Sea View Room Tue., March 11 Schedule Continental Breakfast What is “Voice Search”?! Voice Search 2008 7:30 am has been advertised as the “defi ning” con- Marina Ballroom Foyer ference. Th is panel of industry leaders and leading analysts will give their views on what K3: Conference introduction: Why we’re constitutes Voice Search and the size of the here opportunity, as well as the requirements for 8:00 am Marina G market growth and consumer acceptance.

A brief introduction to the conference theme, Moderator: Bill Meisel, President, TMA organization, and objectives. Associates Mike Cohen, Manager, Speech Technol- Bill Meisel, President, TMA Associates ogy Group, Google K. W. ‘Bill’ Scholz, President, AVIOS, and Victor Melfi , Chief Strategy Offi cer & Se- Speech Technology Consultant, NewS- nior Vice President, Marketing, VoiceBox peech LLC Technologies Neal Bernstein, Senior Director, Local & K4: How big is the Voice Search op- Mobile Search, Microsoft portunity and how high the hurdles? Michael Wehrs, Vice President Evangelism 8:15 am Marina G & Industry Aff airs, Nuance Communica- tions Voice Search Conference 2008 13 Tue., March 11 Schedule John Tadlock, Lead Technical Architect, forms the Phone, David Mitby, Senior Consumer Application Architecture, Program Manager, Tellme, A Microsoft ® AT&T Subsidiary Speech Isn’t Everything: Using Multiple A201: Business models in voice search Modalities in Free Directory Assis- 9:45 am Marina G tance, Craig Hagopian, Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Offi cer, What are the alternative ways to make a busi- V-ENABLE ness out of Voice Search? Th is session dis- Multimodal Search In Mobile Devices, cusses various approaches such as audio ads, Tom Schalk, Vice President, Voice Tech- subscription fees, and soft ware licensing and nology, ATX Group how to make them work in a Voice Search environment. And it’s not just about services C201: Th e impact of voice search and — Enterprises can make Voice Search drive mobile ads on call centers revenue and effi ciency. 9:45 am Marina F

Moderator: John Oberteuff er, Chairman Voice search and business directories make it Advisory Committ ee, Fonix easier to fi nd and contact call centers. In ad- Mobile Search Drives New Opportunities dition, both audio and mobile text ads can for Ad Revenue, Michael Wehrs, Vice drive calls that must be handled effi ciently President Evangelism & Industry Aff airs, and eff ectively. Th ese key trends can drive Nuance Communications, Inc. disruptive change in call center volume and Quid Pro Quo – Why the Ad-Supported in the nature of the calls. At the same time, Business Model is Appealing to Both callers will come to expect the “just-say-what- Consumers & Advertisers, John Ro- you-want” model of interaction used in voice swech, Senior Vice President, Sales, search. Th is session discusses these trends Jingle Networks/1-800-FREE411 and how call centers can be prepared for a When the ROI Works: Speech Applica- “voice web” era. tions for Ads & Direct Response, Roger Nunn, Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Moderator: Markett a Silvera, Chief Voxif y Executive Offi cer, Apptera Machine Over Human: Speech Applica- B201: Multimodal user interfaces tions Take Direct Response Orders, 9:45 am Coronado Patrick Nguyen, Chief Technical Offi cer & Co-Founder, Voxify Mobile phones have multiple modes of enter- Analytics - Th e Key To Agility & Th riving ing and displaying data, all of which can sup- On Change, Joe Alwan, Vice President & port and be supported by speech technology. General Manager AVOKE Caller Experi- Mixing modes of interaction can be either ef- ence Analytics, BBN Technologies fective, but runs the risk of being confusing, Th e Voice Search Paradigm in Call Centers: and this session gives some examples of the Just Say It!, Bill Meisel, President, TMA right way to mix speech and other modes. Associates Moderator: James Larson, Columnist, Information Today, Inc. Break Sponsored by Talkhouse Th e 3 Ways Voice + Visual Search Trans- 11:00 am 14 Voice Search Conference 2008

A202: Applications in Voice Search I C202: Customer-fr iendly call center 11:15 am Marina G applications Th is session highlights creative Voice Search 11:15 am Marina F applications. You evaluate the ease-of-use, value, and commercial potential for existing What are the basic considerations in making a and proposed applications that we think are customer call more satisfying for the custom- promising. er while keeping costs in check? Th is session discusses keys to developing the best voice Moderator: Deborah Dahl, Principal, user interfaces. Conversational Technologies Moderator: K. W. ‘Bill’ Scholz, Speech Adding ‘Directions Assistance’ to 411, Technology Consultant, Mobile, & Web, Amit Desai, Co-founder NewSpeech LLC & Chief Product Offi cer, Dial Directions Leveraging Speech Recognition Technol- Th e World’s Largest Multi-modal Search ogy to Streamline Information Access: A Solution – Challenges, Solutions & Op- Health Net Case Study, Remus Siclovan, portunities, Todd Emerson, Director, Senior Systems Analyst, Health Net, Inc. Solutions Engineering, Medio Systems, Th inking Like Callers, Gary Wright, Presi- Inc.; Yoon Kim, Chief Executive Offi cer, dent, Applied Speech Resources Novauris Technologies Lunch Sponsored by Lumenvox B202: Delivery platform options 12:30 pm Coronado Terrace 11:15 am Coronado A203: Searching audio/video sources Web sites generate large volumes of traffi c, and Voice Search may do the same. Speech on the Web and in enterprises application delivery platforms must handle 1:30 pm Marina G these volumes responsively or lose custom- Increasingly, data in enterprises and on the ers quickly. Th ey must also handle potentially Web are multimedia, with audio and video huge volumes of calls economically. Th is ses- data growing at surprising rates. Speech tech- sion discusses how well these platforms will nology can make audio/video fi les searchable support Voice Search applications and how and even extract business intelligence from the business case for voice search can be them. Th is session highlights alternative solu- served by the underlying technology. tions in audio search.

Moderator: Susan Hura, Principal, Moderator: Patt i Price, Principal, SpeechUsability PPRICE Speech and Language Mobile Voice Search Today – Implementa- Maximizing Online Video’s Potential tion Issues, Trends, and Directions, Rob Requires Changing the Way We Th ink Chambers, Group Program Manager, About Search & Advertising, Alexander Speech Components Group, Microsoft Castro, Chief Executive Offi cer, Pluggd, VoiceBox Conversational Voice Search Inc Platform, Tom Freeman, Senior Vice Voice Access to Social Networks, David President, Sales, VoiceBox Technologies Th omson, Chief Technical Offi cer, SpeechPhone

Voice Search Conference 2008 15 Tue., March 11 Schedule Search and SEO for Video: Th e Role of Leveraging Speech Analytics to Drive Speech-to-Text, Tom Wilde, Chief Ex- Improved Contact Center Performance, ecutive Offi cer, EveryZing Jeff Gallino, Chief Technical Offi cer, Chairman & Co-Founder, CallMiner, B203: Dialog strategies for voice search Inc., Brian Derr, Vice President, Quality 1:30 pm Coronado Management Sales, Aspect Soft ware

Voice search applications can present new A204: Directory Assistance and Local challenges in dialog design. Th is session dis- Search cusses the challenges in making information 2:45 pm Marina G quickly accessible and how the VUI design aff ects usability. Directory search is an important special case of Voice Search, with location-based search a Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, signifi cant special case. isTh session examines Voice Technology, ATX Group how some existing solutions work, the degree Natural Language Input for Voice Search, of their acceptance, and future plans. Melvyn Hunt, Co-Founder, Joint Manag- ing Director, Novauris Technologies Moderator: Bill Meisel, President, TMA Designing for Voice Search: Case Studies Associates From Voice-Only and Multimodal ap- Consumers Can Get Something for plications, Susan Boyce, User Experience Nothing: Free DA & Voice Search Case Manager, Principal Designer, Tellme, A Studies, Susan Wilson, Director, Busi- Microsoft Subsidiary ness Development, DA Services, Nuance Voice Search Without Errors: Impos- Communications, Inc. sible Dream?, Kent Witt enburg, Vice Th e Newest Search: Giving Advertisers a President & Director, Mitsubishi Electric Voice, Scott Kliger, Founder and Chief Research Laboratories Technical Offi cer, Jingle Networks/1- 800-FREE411 C203: Infr astructure for contact centers Directory Assistance: Th e Perfect Channel adapting to Voice Search to Reach “Ready to Transact” Customers, 1:30 pm Marina F Michael Durance, Chief Executive Of- fi cer, Call Genie Voice Search has the potential for changing the image of speech recognition B204: Th e role of standards into that of a friendly personal assistant, 2:45 pm Coronado rather than just another way of implement- ing the touch-tone menus that isolate callers Standards such as VoiceXML, designed ini- from agents. How do contact centers follow tially with telephone-service and call-center through and take advantage of this chance to interactions in mind, are evolving to support make automation more acceptable? more complex and “natural-language” interactions. Similarly, Web standards designed Moderator: Bill Meisel, President, TMA to drive visual Web pages are being adapted Associates to “voice pages.” Th is session discusses how IVR for Virtual ACD Solutions, Steve Mc- current standards support Voice Search and Coy, Director, Technology Strategy, West where they don’t, and how they will evolve. Interactive 16 Voice Search Conference 2008

Moderator: Deborah Dahl, Principal, potential if the challenges of making the ads Conversational Technologies relevant and minimally intrusive can be met. Emerging Standards for Managing Ad- Audio ads are harder to ignore than text ads vanced Dialog on Server and Client, K. and present a particularly delicate tradeoff . W. ‘Bill’ Scholz, Speech Technology Th is session will discuss how to make ads Consultant, NewSpeech LLC acceptable to consumers, and how to fi nd New Standards for Speech Development, sources of relevant audio ads. David Th omson, Chief Technical Of- fi cer, SpeechPhone Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, Benefi ts of Metalanguages for Rolling Out Voice Technology, ATX Group Natural Language Applications, Jean- Voice Search Technology: Leveraging François Gyss, Ergonomics Voice and Opportunities in the Free Directory Multimedia Expertise, Research & Devel- Assistance Market, Marc Barach, Chief opment, Orange Labs, France Telecom Marketing Offi cer, Ingenio, Inc. Th e Art of Delivering Meaningful and C204: Supporting mobile devices in call Relevant Voice Ads, Frank Riva, Senior center applications Director, Industry Marketing, Apptera 2:45 pm Marina F Enhancing Calls with Ads & Content Based on Words Spoken in a Call, Ariel Callers increasingly use mobile devices to Maislos, Chief Executive Offi cer, Co- contact companies. Companies can take ad- Founder, Pudding Media vantage of the platform to deliver some results as text, graphics, or even video. Th is session B205: Voice hosting: Outsourcing the discusses how these multimodal interactions voice infr astructure or application can be supported. 4:00 pm Coronado

Moderator: Neal Bernstein, Senior Direc- Th e high volumes and varying volumes of tor, Local & Mobile Search, Microsoft calls in Voice Search applications can make Mobile, Multimodal Interactions with using outsourced voice hosting services at- the Contact Center, Jeff rey Campbell, tractive. Th e full application or just voice and Product Manager, Video and Advanced telephony infrastructure can be purchased Applications, Customer Contact Business on a usage basis. Th is session describes when Unit, Cisco Systems voice hosting is desirable and some of the al- Multimodal Care: Creating a Lifestyle Ex- ternatives available. perience for the Consumer, Lynda Kate Moderator: K. W. ‘Bill’ Scholz, Speech Smith, Vice President & General Man- Technology Consultant, ager of Care, Nuance Communications NewSpeech LLC Premise or Hosted? Why Not Both?, RJ Break Sponsored by CallMiner Auburn, CTO, Voxeo 3:45 pm From Voice Search to Customer Care: Handling high volume applications, A205: Delivering relevant ads Laura Marino, Group Program Manager, 4:00 pm Marina G Tellme, A Microsoft Subsidiary

Ad-supported applications have signifi cant

Voice Search Conference 2008 17 Tue., March 11 Schedule C205: Speech analytics for business Speech Analytics: Extracting Business intelligence Intelligence from Audio Files, Anna Con- 4:00 pm Marina F very, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Management, Nexidia Speech in databases — for example, call cen- Podmining - SAILing the Multimedia Web, ter recordings — can provide an important Mark Pfeiff er, Vice President, Business source of information on how a business is Development & Communications, SAIL doing and where it can improve operations, LABS customer service, or sales. Th is session de- Analytics For Operational Business Intel- scribes speech analytics tools that are avail- ligence, Pat Peterson, Chief Technical able today. Offi cer, Caller Experience Analytics, BBN Technologies Moderator: Neal Bernstein, Senior Direc- tor, Local & Mobile Search, Microsoft Casino Night and Dinner How Uncovering Key Business Intelligence 7:00 pm Sea View Room Can Save Revenue From Dropping Off Sponsored by: the Bott om Line, Jeff Gallino, Chief CallGenie IBM Technical Offi cer, Chairman & Co- Nuance vlingo VoiceBox Founder, CallMiner Wed., March 12 Schedule Continental Breakfast Sponsored by Moderator: Michael Cohen, Manager, Voice Compass Speech Technology Group, Google 7:30 am Marina Ballroom Foyer Jayant Naik, Senior Director, Product Development, Multi-Channel Self-Care K5: How will contact centers evolve in Solutions, Convergys Bruce Pollock, Vice President, Products & the Voice Search era? Services, West Interactive 8:00 am Marina G Dan Miller, Senior Analyst & Founder, Voice Search will increase call center volumes Opus Research by making it easier to reach them through Rosanna Duce, Vice President, Interna- free directory assistance, and some calls will tional Sales, Loquendo result through a connection from an audio Anna Convery, Senior Vice President, ad, distinguishing them diff erent from typi- Marketing & Product Management, cal customer service calls. Automation using Nexidia speech recognition and text-to-speech will be Joe Alwan, Vice President & General Man- required to handle these calls cost-eff ectively. ager AVOKE Caller Experience Analytics, In addition, Voice Search technology may BBN Technologies support a more fl exible interface for more typical customer service calls. Th is panel will A301: Speech and Mobility discuss how applications, platforms, and dia- 9:45 am Marina G log designs will have to evolve to take full ad- Wireless phones provide mobility. Mobility vantage of the Voice Search opportunity for opens new application opportunities such enterprises. as location-based applications. It also creates 18 Voice Search Conference 2008 new needs, including the ability to operate the C301: Improving the user experience devices in a safe hands-free manner. Speech is 9:45 am Marina F part of the solution, and this session provides examples. Th ere has been much talk about the “empow- ered” consumer who can more easily commu- Moderator: Bill Meisel, President, TMA nicate both positive and negative experiences Associates to other customers. Call centers can increase Making the Connection: Voice Search On customer satisfaction with properly designed the Go, Victor Melfi , Chief Strategy Of- speech automation, but oft en don’t take full fi cer & Senior Vice President, Marketing, advantage of the technology. Th is session VoiceBox Technologies shows how speech technology can make the Ask & You Shall Receive: Mobile Search caller’s experience bett er while controlling Deployment, Michael Wehrs, Vice costs. President Evangelism & Industry Aff airs, Nuance Communications Moderator: Matt Yuschik, Human Factors What’s Holding Back Mobile Applica- Specialist, Convergys Corporation tions?, Dave Grannan, President & Chief Voice Search Query Structure, Jim Larson, Executive Offi cer, vlingo Columnist, Information Today, Inc. Speech Tuning, Practical Tips to Improve B301: Converting voicemail to text Performance, Stephen Keller, Support 9:45 am Coronado Manager, LumenVox Flexible & Robust ASR Grammars, Paolo Converting speech to text isn’t just a dictation Baggia, Director, International Standards, application. For example, voice messages and Loquendo other speech data can be made searchable and Listening to the Voice of the Customer: more easily reviewed and retrieved when con- Technology and Its Role, Kevin Childs, verted into text. Services that convert voice- President, UCN mail to text are proliferating, with features that diff erentiate them, and, in some cases, Break add functionality beyond the basic speech- 11:00 am to-text conversion. A302: Applications of Voice Search II Moderator: K. W. ‘Bill’ Scholz, Speech 11:15 am Marina G Technology Consultant, NewSpeech LLC More creative Voice Search applications. Voicemail Search: A New Frontier, An- thony Bladon, Staff Scientist, CallWave, Moderator: Bruce Pollock, Vice Presi- Inc. dent, Professional Services, West Corpo- Customer Response to Transcription Op- ration tions, David Th omson, Chief Technical Selecting the Right Speech Recognition Offi cer, SpeechPhone Technology for Your Application, Joe Read Your Voice Mail, James Siminoff , Woelfel, Founder & Chief Technical Of- Chief Executive Offi cer, SimulScribe fi cer, Talkhouse Consumers Will Pay for Solutions, Nick Quain, President, CellWand Communi- cations Voice Search Conference 2008 19 Wed., March 12 Schedule Th e World Wide Telecom Web, Nitendra Moderator: Patt i Price, Principal, Rajput, Research Staff Member, IBM PPRICE Speech and Language India Research Multimodal Agent-Mediated Contact Bluetooth Headsets as a Voice Search Center Services, Matt Yuschik, Human Client, Todd Mozer, President & Chief Factors Specialist, Convergys Executive Offi cer, Sensory, Inc. Contact-Center Agent Buddies, Stephen Gates, Manager, Language Engineering B302: International and multilingual for Content Analysis, IBM Research services Dynamic Customer Experiences in the 11:15 am Coronado Contact Center, Jeff Wiles, Regional Manager, Voice Application Solutions Th e growth of the international market, mul- Team, Genesys Labs tinational corporations, and multiple languages within a nation creates multilingual Lunch demands on speech technology. Voice search 12:30 pm Sea View Room is an international application. Th is session discusses commercial technologies for ad- A303: Agent support of automation in dressing these needs. services 1:45 pm Marina G Moderator: Paul Welham, Chief Execu- tive Offi cer, CereProc Ltd Agents can support speech applications in A Look at the Europe Voice Search Market, the background, either by being the primary Detlev Artelt, Chief Executive Offi cer, interpreter of the speech or by supporting aixvox GmbH speech recognition. Th is session discusses ap- TALES: An International News Moni- plications that use agents and technology to toring System, Salim Roukos, Senior best support the use of background agents. Manager, Multilingual NLP Technolo- gies, IBM Moderator: Patt i Price, Principal, Cultural Diff erences in Designing Speech PPRICE Speech and Language Interfaces for Former British Colonies Top Five Reasons Why Agent-Assisted in Asia Pacifi c,Alan Knipe, Founder, Speech IVR for Mobile Voice Search is StarNet Systems Important to the Customer Experience, Mark Carbrey, Chief Information Of- C302: Agents and automation fi cer, Cross Country Automotive Services 11:15 am Marina F Human’ Voice Automation, Garry Galin- sky, Product Manager, Call Genie Automation can make agents more eff ective Guided Self-Service: Making Speech Tech- by taking on the repetitive tasks that make nology Easier to Adopt, Llance Kezner, agents into simulations of speech recognition Vice President, Sales, Spoken Communi- and text-to-speech engines and lead to high cations agent turnover. Agents can also support automated systems in the background without B303: “Personal assistant” and avatar coming on the line. Th is session discusses services how agents can be more eff ectively integrated 1:45 pm Coronado with automated systems. Th e ability to take voice notes, manage con- 20 Voice Search Conference 2008 tacts, locate information, and similar tasks Consultant, Avaya once — in less complex times — was the pur- Mike Berlin, Vice President, Sales & Busi- view of the personal assistant. Speech technol- ness Development, AVST ogy, wireless phones, and the Web infrastructure are making it possible to simulate some K6: Closing debate: Lessons we should of these capabilities with automatic systems, take fr om the conference both over the telephone and with avatars on 3:15 pm Marina G the Web. Th is session gives examples. Voice Search 2008 will raise many issues, Moderator: Sara Basson, Program Direc- suggest innovative applications, and provide tor - Human Ability, IBM - T.J. Watson many solutions. What, aft er all, defi nes Voice Research Center Search? What are the most important mes- Virtual Conversations with Real People, sages for service providers, enterprises, and William Harless, President & Chief Ex- their vendors? Th is distinguished panel will ecutive Offi cer, Interactive Drama Inc. debate what we have learned — and what to Very Personal’ Personal Assistants for expect from Voice Search in 2008. Mobile People, Bachir Halimi, President, Excendia Inc. Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, Don’t Forget: Search Your Memories, Sunil Voice Technology, ATX Group Vemuri, Chief Product Offi cer, reQall Mark McCormack, Chief Marketing Of- fi cer, Call Genie C303: Managing communications Dave Grannan, President & Chief Execu- 1:45 pm Marina F tive Offi cer, vlingo David Nahamoo, Speech Business Strate- Ideally, one should be able to use a phone by gist and Chief Technical Offi cer, IBM just asking for what one or whom one wants Bill Meisel, President, TMA Associates — another form of voice search. In addition, text and email messages should be available as speech over the telephone. Th is is the long-term ideal of Unifi ed Communications, but also forms part of the paradigm of Voice Search as a personal assistant, with assistance extending to communications. Th is session discusses what is currently available and what to expect.

Moderator: Bill Meisel, President, TMA Associates Th e Personal Assistant – the Vision of a voice enabled Mass-Market Applica- tion, Lupo Pape, Managing Director, Chief Executive Offi cer & Co-Founder, SemanticEdge Putt ing the Unifi ed in Unifi ed Commu- nications, Dustin Donaldson, Senior

Voice Search Conference 2008 21 Speaker Biographies

Joe Alwan is VP/GM of AVOKE Caller Experience Sara Basson works in IBM Research, where she is Analytics at BBN Technologies. Based on 30 years of driving strategy and business opportunities for speech research, companies select AVOKE Analytics to make transcription technology. Sara holds an M.B.A. from their centers satisfying and effi cient. Joe was previously New York University, and a Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing VP/GM of call center solutions at Empirix, and has 24 Sciences from Th e Graduate Center of the City Univer- years of experience turning technology innovation into sity of New York. Sara serves on the Board of Directors of business solutions. AVIOS, and is also on the editorial board of the Interna- tional Journal of Speech Technology. Detlev Artelt is CEO of aixvox GmbH, a voice consulting company in Aachen, Germany. He is the author Neal Bernstein, a Senior Director at Microsoft , is re- of numerous articles and market studies in the computer sponsible for the company’s overall voice search strategy telephony and speech automation industry sectors. De- and off erings, and other strategic projects. He has been tlev is the author of the voice compass, a comprehensive at Microsoft for three years and has spent the majority encyclopaedia that clarifi es the voice market in plain of the past 14 years of his career in the voice recognition terms and without jargon. Detlev also heads up the Uni- application space, including IBM and two start-ups he fi ed Communication Group at the Eco Institution in co-founded. Germany. Monica Bisacca joined Loquendo in 2002 as systems RJ Auburn drives Voxeo’s technology leadership in expert, in charge of Loquendo’s education and training the internet and voice solution industries, and also leads department, delivering VoiceXML application develop- the research, evaluation, and design of Voxeo’s carrier ment training and VoiceXML interpreter debugger test- class Voice Centers. RJ is Editor and Chair of the W3C ing process. Since 2005 she is Loquendo’s Sales Manager Call Control XML (CCXML) standard and working for the North American market. Her responsibilities in- group, and oversees Voxeo’s leadership contribution to clude developing partnerships and the market penetra- VoiceXML, ENUM/DNS, and other industry standards. tion of the company’s solutions. RJ is also an acknowledged expert in the fi elds of voice recognition, call center integration, and call control and Currently Staff Scientist at CallWave, Dr. Anthony conferencing. Bladon leads the company’s speech technology initia- tives. His long career in speech technology spans lead- Christopher Bader is the CTO of Kratylos Tech- ership positions at Oxford University, Voice Processing nologies, Inc., a Massachusett s-based startup commer- Corporation (now part of Nuance), Ericsson and several cializing Kratylos’s patent-pending rich-client approach start-ups. He is the author of 50 research papers and sev- to distributed voice search. With over twenty years of eral patents. industry experience in speech recognition and information retrieval, Dr. Bader holds a BSE from Princeton and Susan Boyce has been designing speech UIs for more a Ph.D. from MIT. than 17 years. She earned her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psy- chology from UMass Amherst. Susan lead the forward Paolo Baggia is currently Director of International looking design team at Bell Labs and helped develop Standards of Loquendo and actively involved in W3C early natural language systems. She has run her own con- and the VoiceXML Forum, where he is a member of the sulting business and joined Tellme in 2004 to further her Board of Directors. He is part of the Project and System work in voice search. Engineering Dept. of Loquendo. In 1989, he joined CSELT, Telecom Italia’s R&D lab, and was involved in David Brigida is an IBM business development exec- several research activities, including NL, parsing, SDS, utive for Real Time Translation Services. Th roughout his and LM. He holds a degree in computer science from the diverse career, he has held roles in product development, Università di Torino. sales, and project management. Areas of expertise include speech technology, mobile and wireless solutions, perva- Marc Barach brings to Ingenio a 20-year career in sive computing, and the Travel and Transportation In- consumer services, technology and Internet marketing. dustry. Mr. Brigida is a project management professional His experience includes: president & CEO of I-Impact, certifi ed by both IBM and the Project Management In- Inc., CMO of InsWeb, Inc., VP, Marketing at Charles stitute. He holds fi ve technology patents and degrees in Schwab & Co., and founder of First Nationwide Bank’s both Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. NASD broker/dealer and life insurance subsidiary, FN Investment Center. Jeffrey Campbell is the Product Manager for Video and Advanced Applications within Cisco’s Customer Contact Business Unit. In this capacity, Mr. Campbell is

22 Voice Search Conference 2008

responsible for developing the technologies, protocols, As SVP of Marketing & Product Management at Nexidia, and products that enable video applications and other Anna Convery is responsible for developing the sales advanced technologies such as presence to be deployed and marketing strategy, as well as overseeing the devel- on Customer Interaction Networks. opment and enhancement of new and existing products. Anna has presented at several industry events, includ- Mark Carbrey is Chief Information Offi cer at Cross ing SpeechTEK and Call Center Summit, and has been Country Automotive Services, bringing over 25 years of quoted in numerous publications, including Contact soft ware and industrial engineering experience to his po- Professional, CRM Magazine, and Speech Technology sition. In his role, Mark leverages his extensive expertise Magazine. to drive Cross Country’s technology leadership, growth, and innovation in delivering next-generation services, Dr. Deborah Dahl is a consultant in speech and nat- advancing the company’s award-winning contact centers, ural language technologies with 25 years of experience. and innovative improvements in the company’s service She is an expert on standards, chairing the W3C’s Mul- delivery infrastructure. timodal Interaction Group, and serving as a member of the Voice Browser Group. She is the editor of the book Alexander Castro co-founded Pluggd in 2006. Alex Practical Spoken Dialog Systems. has deep product and management experience from Mi- crosoft , Amazon, and Trilogy. He holds undergraduate Brian Derr is vice president of quality management and graduate degrees in computer science from Cornell sales at Aspect Soft ware. In this role, he is responsible for University, where he also completed coursework at Cor- driving sales and product development for Aspect® Qual- nell’s Johnson School of Management. ity Management™. He brings more than 17 years of experience in the soft ware and telecommunications industry Rob Chambers is a Group Program Manager working to Aspect Soft ware. in the Speech Components Group in the Microsoft Busi- ness Division. His team designs and develops the speech Rosanna Duce has led Loquendo’s international sales recognition and speech synthesis components included team since the company’s foundation in 2001, creating in an increasing number of Microsoft products, including strategic partnerships and alliances with market players Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Offi ce Communication worldwide. Her market vision and industry trends aware- Server, Windows Mobile, and Windows Vista. ness is vital to the company’s R&D activities and she has an extensive portfolio of international sales achievement. Kevin Childs joined UCN in 2002 – at the inception Rosanna holds a degree in Computer Science from the of the company’s on-demand, contact center application University of Turin, Italy. initiative – to create a complete contact routing and agent management solution that has grown to fi ve separate con- Mike Durance has over 20 years of experience in the tact center products. Mr. Childs co-authored the book In- telecommunications and soft ware industries. Before Call terpreting the Voice of the Customer. Prior to his UCN ex- Genie, he was VP and GM of the Digital Solutions divi- perience, he held a number of senior leadership positions sion of Toshiba America Information Systems. Prior to with Adecco, a Swiss-based human capital company. Toshiba, he was Corporate VP of the Integrated Solu- tions Group for ADC Telecommunications Inc, SVP of Jordan Cohen is a Senior Scientist at SRI Internation- Global Consulting Services for Saville Systems and held al, specializing in language based applications. He is the senior management positions at Nortel Networks. Principal Investigator for the DARPA GALE program for SRI. He has worked in the Department of Defense, John Elliott is the Vice President of Sales at vlingo. IBM, and at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Prin- Prior to joining vlingo, John served as Director of Service ceon, NJ. Jordan was previously the CTO of Voice Signal Provider Sales at Nuance. John’s sales career involves ex- Technologies, a company which produces multimodal tensive experience within the carrier space, with a focus speech-centric interfaces for mobile devices. on establishing new markets for a variety of industry- leading telecommunications technologies. Mike Cohen joined Google in 2004 to initiate and now lead the company’s speech technology eff orts. Prior to Todd Emerson has over six years experience inter- joining Google, Mike was at Nuance Communications facing with wireless operators to architect and integrate for ten years, which he co-founded to develop over- technical solutions with operators’ various internal orga- the-telephone spoken language applications. While at nizations, platforms and vendors. Todd has over 15 years Nuance he coauthored the book “Voice User Interface of technology integration experience and has worked Design” (Addison-Wesley, 2004). closely with voice recognition technologies from Locus Dialogue, Tellme and Novauris since 2001.

Voice Search Conference 2008 23 Speaker Biographies

Tom Freeman is SVP of Sales for VoiceBox. He was and responsible for leading Nokia’s entry into the mobile Vice President at PCDOCS, and also the Vice President email market. Grannan has extensive experience in the of Sales and Marketing for InfoAccess, where he was in- mobile and soft ware industries and a proven track record strumental in selling the company to Stellent Corpora- for launching and growing new businesses. tion. Aft er the sale, Tom became Stellant’s Vice President of International Sales and Operations. Gerd Graumann is the Director of Business Develop- ment at LumenVox, an innovator of speech recognition Garry Galinsky has been with Call Genie for nearly soft ware, and has worked for more then 8 years in the ar- two years and is responsible for sett ing and evangelizing eas of speech recognition, audio mining and core speech the company’s product vision. Prior to Call Genie, Galin- engine development. Mr. Graumann is a regular speaker sky spent seven years in the mortgage industry co-found- at VoIP, Telecom and Speech industry events, and has ing Seatt le’s 4ADream.com and serving as Vice President worked with Philips, Siemens and Dragon Systems. of XL Dynamics, a leading mortgage soft ware developer. Jean-François Gyss is a technical expert and project Charles Galles is a Speech Scientist at Intervoice manager for multimedia and voice services at Orange with over 15 years of experience in government and in- Labs Lannion in France. He is involved for more than fi ve dustry applications of speech recognition. As a member years in French nationwide deployments of natural lan- of Intervoice’s Design Collaborative, he specializes in guage voice applications for France Telecom and Orange. speech design, grammar development and speech appli- He represents France Telecom metalanguage solution in cation tuning. When not talking to computers, Charles the VoiceXML Forum Metalanguage and Advanced Dia- enjoys biking and aviation. log groups.

Jeff Gallino oversees CallMiner’s current product de- Craig Hagopian is responsible for driving V-EN- velopment and future product direction. Gallino served ABLE’s daily operations, including sales, marketing, as President and CEO during CallMiner’s fi rst fi ve years, business development, product planning, and market where he lead the company to become internationally communications. Prior to V-ENABLE, he was the Chief recognized and award winning enterprise soft ware com- Marketing Offi cer of Axesstel, a CDMA terminal manu- pany. Gallino has over 18 years experience delivering facturing company, held management positions at Air- complex soft ware and hardware solutions 2Lan, and SkyTel Communications, a wireless data messaging service entity. Stephen C. Gates, Ph.D., is manager of the Language Engineering for Content Analysis at the IBM T. J. Watson Bachir Halimi founded Excendia, developer of Research Center in Hawthorne, NY. His group is part of speech-enabled personal assistants for mobile busi- the Contact Center of the Future eff ort within IBM’s ness people. Bachir is the company’s product architect world-wide research labs, and is focused on speech ana- and technology offi cer. He also founded Alis in 1981, a lytics applications. world leader in multilingual computing, and MediaSoft in 1987, a computer telephony toolkit vendor. Mr Halimi Rhonda Gibler Vice President of Sales (West In- gave speeches on computer linguistics, voice communi- teractive) has been with West Corporation for the past cations and cryptography. He holds a Masters degree in eight years. Her experience within West includes selling Computer Science from the University of Montreal. directly and managing sales within the West Interactive, West Notifi cations Group, West Teleservices and West William G. Harless, president and CEO of IDI, Business Services while supporting both direct and part- holds a Ph.D. degree in psychology and learning theory. ner channel sales. He conceptualized, designed and, with colleagues, developed the Virtual Conversations® human/computer Dr. Juan E. Gilbert is the T-SYS Distinguished As- dialogue model that integrates speech recognition and sociate Professor at Auburn University in the Computer digital video technologies. He has been awarded three Science & Soft ware Engineering Department where he U.S. Government patents and is widely published directs the Human Centered Computing Lab. He has several research projects in voice user interfaces, multi- Michael Hickerson, President of Step Labs, has over modality, databases and data mining. Th e lab aims to cre- 20 years of executive sales experience in the video and ate innovative solutions to real world problems fueled by telecommunications industries. He is now spearheading research. the entry of Step Labs’ voice separation technology to make voice a reliable input tool for any consumer elec- Dave Grannan is President & CEO of vlingo. He tronic device. joined vlingo in 2007 from Nokia, where he was a GM

24 Voice Search Conference 2008

Melvyn Hunt has a doctorate from Oxford University. Yoon Kim has broad industry and research experience He has spent a long career in speech technology R&D, in speech and multimodal interface technologies. Prior having headed speech recognition research for BNR, to Novauris, Yoon was with SRI International, CCRMA, the National Research Council of Canada, Marconi and Stanford University and NeoSpeech Inc., which he co- (jointly with John Bridle) at Dragon Systems UK, a role founded. He has also served in the ETSI Aurora DSR he continues to fulfi ll at Novauris, which he co-founded. Standards Workgroup. Yoon has a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University. Susan L. Hura, PhD is the founder of SpeechUsabil- ity, a consultancy focused on improving customer experi- Scott Kliger founded 1-800-FREE411 - the fi rst and ence by incorporating user-centered design practices in largest voice-based directory assistance search service. speech technology projects. Susan founded the usability Prior to founding Jingle Networks, Scott invented the program at Intervoice, and prior to that worked a mem- precedent-sett ing Enliven product at Narrative Commu- ber of the human factors team at a Lucent Technologies. nications serving as co-founder and CTO of until its ac- As a faculty member at Purdue University she cofounded quisition by Excite@Home. His experience also includes a multidisciplinary team researching novel approaches to key architect positions at Lotus, WordPerfect and IBM. speech recognition. Susan holds a doctorate in Linguis- tics from the University of Texas at Austin . She served as Alan Knipe’s twin passions for Electronic and Music co-chair of SpeechTEK 2007 and 2008, and is a member have fi nally merged in AVIOS. His career began in Avia- of the AVIOS Board of Directors. tion Electronics and moved to Health Computers where he designed the fi rst ward based ordering systems. Alan Igor Jablokov is CEO of Yap, focused on next gen- founded StarNet, now StarRez in 1991. Th e company in eration speech technologies. He was formerly IBM’s Pro- Denver Colorado and Australia is a leader in higher edu- gram Director for multimodal research, an Extreme Blue cation solutions. mentor, and Chairman of the VoiceXML Forum. Igor holds a BS Computer Engineering from Penn State, an James A. Larson is an independent consultant and MBA from UNC, and has over 20 patents pending.” VoiceXML trainer. He is the author of the VXML Guide (www.vxmlguide.com). He is co-chair of SpeechTEK Volker Jantzen is CEO and Board Member of SVOX. 2008 Conference and columnist for SpeechTEK Maga- His research fi eld at the Swiss Federal Institute of Tech- zine. He represents Intervoice at the W3C Voice Browser nology comprised text-to-speech, speech recognition and Working Group. computer linguistics, a fi eld he had also pursued while working at IBM. Volker has been an honored member of David Lubensky, Manager in the Multilingual Analyt- the advisory board for Speech Technology Magazine. ics and User Technologies Department in IBM Research. He leads R&D of Real Time Translation Services and Stephen Keller is a support, training and documen- is the area strategist for Contact Center of the Future. tation lead at LumenVox, a speech recognition company. His mission is to drive IBM’s leadership in multilingual He has a particular focus and application developers who technologies, highly scalable platforms, structured and use the LumenVox Speech Engine. He has developed a unstructured analytics, natural language processing, mul- series of training videos at LumenVox.com for developers timodal interaction, and overall user experience. that cover best practices, application design, and trouble- shooting Ariel Maislos, Pudding Media CEO and co-Found- er, created Pudding Media with the vision to allow any Mike Kennewick is co-founder and CEO for VoiceBox voice provider to enrich and monetize their calling plans and has over 24 years of exec experience. At Microsoft , with relevant content for consumers. Ariel previously Mike was responsible for formulating business develop- co-founded Passave, which was acquired by PMC-Sierra ment strategy and launch of OEM Sales for MS-DOS® Inc. for $300 million, and spent 10 years in the Israeli De- and Windows®. Mike was also the founder of Saros Cor- fense Forces intelligence. poration. Saros was successfully sold to FileNET. Laura Marino is responsible for Voice Search Prod- Llance Kezner is Vice President of Spoken Com- ucts at Tellme, a Microsoft Subsidiary. Prior to joining munications has had a leadership role in the customer Tellme, she was Director of Product Management and communication and call center space since 1996. Llance Marketing at Nuance. Previously she held senior prod- is a regular contributor to customer service publications uct management and soft ware development positions at and writes regularly on various blogs. Previously, he co- SAP and Hydrocomp. She holds two Masters of Science founded an early stage technology company that sup- degrees from Stanford University. plied self-service applications to global companies

Voice Search Conference 2008 25 Speaker Biographies

Dr. Judith Markowitz is a leading speech-industry David Mitby has spent 7 years at Tellme leading prod- analyst; president, J. Markowitz Consultants; Technol- uct and platform development. He has worked closely ogy Editor, Speech Technology Magazine; Co-chair, with the speech technology and directory search teams VoiceXML Speaker Biometrics Committ ee; and Invited to create “continual refi nement” strategies for voice ser- Expert, W3C Voice Browser Working Group. She’s been vices. David led the original eff orts to create a multimod- named one of the top ten leaders in speech and, in 2006, al platform at Tellme and now leads the product develop- IEEE awarded her Senior Member status ment for the Tellme mobile client.

Dr. Val Matula and his team conduct research in Todd F. Mozer is CEO of Sensory, a leading supplier natural language and speech processing technology, of chips and soft ware for embedded speech applications acoustics, mobile applications, streaming video, and self- in consumer electronics. Mr. Mozer has spent over 20 service systems at Avaya. He has nearly 20 years of ex- years and been awarded numerous patents in the fi eld perience in the architecture, design and development of of speech technology. He received BA degrees from UC automated systems while at Avaya Labs and its predeces- Santa Barbara and an MBA from Stanford University. sor, Bell Labs. David Nahamoo is the Speech CTO and the Speech Mark McCormack has over 15 years of communica- Business Strategist for IBM Research. He is responsible tions, technology and venture capital experience. Prior for establishing IBM Research global strategy in the to joining Call Genie, he was EVP of Sales and CMO speech area and identifying business opportunities across of RateIntegration, CMO of SkyMast, EVP of Sales and IBM soft ware and services businesses. David is focusing Marketing for Intertech Management Group and VP of on Contact Centers, Mobility, Unifi ed Communications, Corporate Development for Saville Systems. He also Transcription, and Analytics solutions. held management positions at Columbia Capital Corpo- ration and Prime Sports Network. Patrick Nguyen is CTO and Co-Founder of Voxify. A veteran technologist with over 15 years of experience, Steve McCoy is currently, Director, Technology Strat- Mr. Nguyen is an expert in speech, data warehouse, e- egy, at West Interactive Corporation where he helps business analytics, and CRM. Mr. Nguyen has an MBA determine technology solutions that best fi t business from MIT’s Sloan School and a BS in Electrical Engineer- requirements and future opportunities. Previously, in ing from the University of Melbourne. 23 years with FDC, he was one of the founders of Call Interactive; one of the industry’s fi rst high volume call Roger Nunn is VP of Worldwide Sales for Voxify. Mr. processing companies. Nunn is a veteran sales and marketing executive of contact center solutions with experience at Blue Pumpkin, Bill Meisel is president of TMA Associates (www. Avaya, Sun, and Auspex Systems. He holds a M.Sc. in tmaa.com). Meisel writes Speech Strategy News newslet- Management Science and a Bachelor’s degree in Engi- ter, is co-organizer of the new Voice Search Conference, neering from Imperial College, London University. and recently edited a book, VUI Visions. In the 1980s, he founded and ran a speech recognition technology John A. Oberteuffer is the Chairman, Advisory company. Meisel holds a B.S and a Ph.D. in Electrical Committ ee at Fonix Corporation. A member of the Engineering. Board of Directors and a past president of AVIOS, he was the founder and editor of the speech industry newslett er Victor Melfi is chief strategy offi cer and SVP of Mar- ASRNews. He received his Ph.D. in physics from North- keting. Melfi has provided technology strategy to the western University in 1969. world’s leading tech companies. His expertise in strategy, marketing and advertising served him well during his ten- Col. Gad Oren, an Electronics Engineer, has over 15 ure at the offi ce of Booz-Allen and Hamilton, and while years of professional experience with speech recognition, re-engineering Global Analytics at Reader’s Digest. mostly with the EW group in the IDF Signals Corps. He has also served as a Senior Consultant at Rafael, Motor- Dan Miller has over 25 years experience in business ola, Tadiran and Israel Aerospace Industries in his areas development and strategy. He founded Opus Research in of expertise. 1985 to cover speech processing, Web services and real- time communications. Dan ran advisory services at Th e As vice president of Product Strategy, Ron Owens is Kelsey Group covering local, mobile and speech-based e- responsible for the strategic product and services road- commerce. He held executive positions at Atari, Warner map for First Data Voice Services. In this role, he helps Communications and Pacifi c Telesis. Dan has a BA from to defi ne, manage, create and maintain the competitive Hampshire College and an MBA from Columbia. advantages First Data brings to clients’ mission critical

26 Voice Search Conference 2008

applications. With more than 18 years’ experience in Nick Quain, President & CEO, CellWand Commu- technology, banking and voice automation, Owens has nications. Responsible for managing the day-to-day op- worked for EDS, Bank of America and most recently, erations of CellWand, in addition to overseeing product Intervoice, where he was vice president of Global Con- development and spearheading all strategic alliances and sulting Services. Considered an industry expert, Owens wireless carrier partnerships, Nick has pioneered Cell- has published and contributed to regional, national and Wand’s success with #TAXI as the fi rst of a new breed of international articles related to the implementation of consumer-centric Voice Enabled Mobile Search applica- highly sophisticated speech recognition applications. tions for wireless carriers across North America.

Dr. Lupo Pape is Managing Director, CEO and co- Nitendra Rajput has been working as a Research founder of SemanticEdge GmbH. SemanticEdge is a Staff Member at IBM India Research Lab, New Delhi Berlin based speech technology company focussed on since 1998. His areas of interest include speech process- dialog technology and modular enterprise solutions. ing, dialog management systems and conversational Th e natural language applications have received several systems for pervasive devices. He has published and awards. Prior to SemanticEdge, Lupo Pape worked at reviewed papers in top conferences and organized work- McKinsey&Company. He received a doctorate from the shops in these areas. Technical University of Berlin and studied Economics in Switzerland and Spain. Before joining as a CTO at Vianix, Dr. Veeru Ramas- wamy worked as a Director for Comcast in New Media Pat Peterson is CTO of AVOKE Caller Experience Development, where he was responsible for the design Analytics at BBN Technologies. Pat has over 20 years ex- and architecture for existing and next generation cable perience developing speech solutions, including the fi rst video, voice and high-speed data infrastructure. At Bell large vocabulary recognizer and the fi rst natural language Labs, Veeru was the architect and technical lead in build- call router. Pat holds a B.S and M.S. in Electrical Engi- ing a Packet Multimedia Gateway from wireless to IP neering and an Sc.D in the fi eld of Sensory Communica- networks, in-building wireless, Digital Watermarking in tion, all from MIT. Cable and Gigabit Ethernet MPLS Switch (GEMS).

Mark P. Pfeiffer, Vice President Business Develop- As Senior Director of Industry Marketing, Frank Riva ment and Communications at SAIL LABS Technology helps guide the strategic direction and positioning of draws from vast experience in the speech recognition Apptera’s MobileAd Technology and closely monitors fi eld. He mainly deals with government clients and intel- competitive and industry developments within the Mo- ligence services globally. Podmining® is one of the prod- bile Marketing arena. Mr. Riva possesses over 17 years of ucts at SAIL LABS he has co-invented. sales and marketing experience with an emphasis upon marketing, advertising, and retail technology solutions. Mike Phillips is Co-Founder and CTO of vlingo. Mike has been active in the speech technology for over twenty John Roswech works directly with the hundreds of years. He started his career as a researcher fi rst at Carn- businesses who use the 1-800-FREE411 network as a egie Mellon University and then at MIT working on core unique and powerful advertising medium to reach the 17 technology for automatic speech recognition. In 1994, he million callers who dial 1-800-FREE411 monthly. John founded SpeechWorks (now named Nuance). was previously vice president of sales for Atlas Solutions - an operating unit of aQuantive (NASDAQ: AQNT). Bruce Pollock is Vice-President of Products and Ser- Prior to aQuantive, John was senior director of sales with vices at West Interactive Corporation. He has 20 years of Matchlogic (Excite@Home), territory sales manager for business management experience, including eleven years Brio Technology and director of sales for Forman Inter- in the automated customer contact fi eld. Bruce serves on active (Register.com). the Board of Directors of both the VoiceXML Forum and the American Voice Input-Output Society (AVIOS). John Roukos leads the Rosett a Consortium (IBM with six leading US universities) for the DARPA GALE Patt i Price has over 20 years experience in develop- project for developing machine translation technology ing and transferring speech and language technology, for both text and speech inputs and for developing distil- including co-founding of three companies (Nuance, Bra- lation systems to answer user’s requests for information. voBrava! and Soliloquy Learning). She specializes in He has lead eff orts for web-scale natural language pro- using speech technology in education and training, and cessing systems and the development of IBM’s Natural consults in the use of speech in applications, technology Language Understanding ViaVoice Telephony product, assessment, and planning speech strategies and technol- the fi rst commercial soft ware to support full natural lan- ogy transition. guage understanding.

Voice Search Conference 2008 27 Speaker Biographies

Dr. Alex Rudnicky’s research is in dialog and learn- Lynda Kate Smith is responsible for strategy and ing-based spoken language systems. He is Principal execution of Nuance’s care/call center business, which Systems Scientist in the Computer Science Department includes solutions for business-to-consumer, business- at Carnegie Mellon University and on the faculty of to-business and business-to-employee operations. Smith the Language Technologies Institute. He serves on the holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Simpson College boards of the Applied Voice Input-Input Society (AV- and a master’s degree in business administration from IOS) and of SIGdial. the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Dr. Thomas B. Schalk is Vice President, Voice Tech- nology at ATX, a leading telematics service provider with For more than 15 years, Brian Spraetz has helped customers that include Mercedes-Benz and BMW. He organizations eff ectively deploy technology to improve leads a group that focuses on developing speech-enabled performance. Having held senior positions in product telematics services. Prior to ATX, he was the CTO of development, management and marketing, Brian off ers Philips Speech Processing, and the CTO of Voice Con- a broad base perspective of technical knowledge and op- trol Systems. He has over twenty years of experience in erational expertise. the speech recognition industry. He received his PhD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and his With 19 years at AT&T, John Tadlock sets architectur- BSEE from the George Washington University. al and technology strategy for voice-channel self-service applications. In 1990 he started SBC Lab’s Speech and Dr. Bill Scholz is a speech technology consultant Language Technology group. Prior to AT&T, he worked with over 30 years of experience in research and prod- at Central Institute for the Deaf supporting speech and uct development in computer-based training and expert hearing research and at McDonnell Douglas studying systems, as well as the design and development of service artifi cial intelligence. creation tools and the custom engineering of speech and multimodal applications for the telecommunications With 23 years of experience in speech technology, Da- marketplace. vid Thomson is the CTO for Th e Speech Group (a.k.a. SpeechPhone), an enhanced service provider that Remus Siclovan is Senior Systems Analyst in the Call hosts voice activated applications. David also chairs the Center Group at Health Net, one of the nation’s largest VoiceXML Forum Tools Committ ee. He has ten U.S. publicly traded managed healthcare companies. Mr. Si- patents and has published over 20 papers on speech pro- clovan is responsible for the integration of Speech En- cessing. abled IVR applications for all Health Net Contact Center Sites and has more than 10 years of contact center experi- Peter Trompett er has been in international Soft ware ence. He has shared his expertise at numerous industry Management positions for over 20 years. With a strong events, including Call Center Week, SpeechTEK and Call background in operations, applications and systems soft - Center Demo. ware management, Trompett er has been responsible for the development and implementation of GyrusLogic’s Markett a Silvera is an accomplished visionary, en- conversational dialog product and business development trepreneur and chief executive in voice technology, In- strategy, including related global marketing and sales. ternet and telecommunications industries. Since joining Trompett er has a Management Information Systems de- Apptera in 2005 as chief executive and board member, gree and is based in Phoenix, Arizona. she has led the company to be the fi rst provider of v- Business solutions (e-Business over the phone) that help Sunil Vemuri is the Chief Product Offi cer at reQall. enterprises increase revenues through ad-serving tech- His research has been extensively broadcast on TV and nologies, 1-to-1 marketing and personalized e-commerce covered in CNN, New York Times, Newsweek, and MIT over the phone channel. Technology Review. His areas of expertise include: Hu- man Memory Assistance, Information Retrieval, Infor- James Siminoff is a serial entrepreneur who has been mation Extraction, Information Visualization, Organiza- building businesses for over a decade. In 2007 James tional Memory, and Speech Recognition. He received his received the Entrepreneur Award from Crain’s Business Ph.D. from MIT’s Media Lab. New York in recognition for his accomplishments with SimulScribe. Under James’ leadership the company has Hans Wang has over 18 years of experience in the established itself as the US leader in voicemail to text semiconductor industry. Prior to joining Fortemedia, he services and visual voicemail applications; and is opera- spent seven years in various marketing and management tional on over 95 percent of US carriers. positions at National Semiconductor. Before joining Na-

28 Voice Search Conference 2008

tional Semiconductor, Hans worked on system design, rate research in HMI technologies for 23 years, holding IC design, and applications at various Silicon Valley com- technical leadership and management positions at MCC, panies for seven years. Bellcore, GTE/Verizon Labs, and now Mitsubishi Elec- tric Research Labs, where he is VP and Director. Mike Wehrs is responsible for overall mobile business strategy, including M&A, product strategy, and policy Joe Woelfel is the Founder and CTO of Talkhouse for Nuance. Previously, he was Vice President, Product LLC. Joe has over ten years experience working with Management & Global Marketing at Tegic, where he speech recognition technologies and over fi eenft years served as the product management visionary on all of experience working with information retrieval technolo- its wireless platform and embedded products. Michael gies. Prior to founding Talkhouse Joe worked at Mitsubi- graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer and shi Electric Research Labs, Dragon Systems and General Information Science from Syracuse University. Electric.

Paul Welham (CEO and Co Founder of CereProc in Gary Wright is the President of Applied Speech Re- 2005) has over 25 years in the IT, the last 8 years of which sources, a fi rm specializing in voice user interface design he has held senior roles in companies working in speech and general speech recognition consulting. In addition to technology. Prior to founding CereProc, Paul was at Tele- having worked for several speech recognition vendors, phonetics, as the Director of Sales and Marketing. Mr. Wright has consulted for clients ranging from For- tune 100 companies in fi nancialservices and technology Tom Wilde is a widely recognized leader in the Internet to start-ups. search and online advertising fi elds. Prior to becoming EveryZing’s CEO, Tom held numerous industry leader- Dr. Matt Yuschik is a Human Factors Specialist at ship roles, including SVP/GM of the consumer division Convergys. He designed and evaluated Multimodal at NameMedia; SVP/GM of MIVA Inc.’s North Ameri- applications for Call Center agents, as well as voice ac- can division, and senior operating roles managing Terra tivated voice mail. His designs are intuitive and easy-to- Lycos’ global search and publishing divisions. use, since they follow conventional principles of human behavior. He has numerous patents and publications de- Jeff Wiles has over 20 years experience in sales and scribing Human-Machine Interfaces. marketing of technology solutions. Jeff is currently Re- gional Manager Voice Platform Solutions for Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, the leader provider in VXML platforms.

Susan Wilson focuses on market development and growth of Nuance’s Voice Search strategy, which includes directory assistance, free DA and voice search applications. She is responsible for market development and growth of telephony-based messaging capabilities including voicemail, unifi ed messaging and voice activated dialing. Wilson has held positions at InfoNXX, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and Bell Atlantic Mobile. Aft er receiving his doctorate from University of Texas at Austin, Kent Witt enburg has worked in corpo-

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