Speech applications can potentially be more useable than applications that require dexterity with a mouse or keyboard, or the ability to read text in a tiny font. However, changes in vision, hearing, and physical mobility that occur as people age can affect the usability of speech and multimodal applications. Applications for a population that includes older users must take these changes into account in the user interface design process so that the applications are usable by both older and younger users. This session will discuss such topics as speech rate, volume, pauses and timing, vocabulary, menu complexity, user control of the interface, multimodality, accommodating both older and younger users, and social considerations, as well as additional topics of interest to the attendees.

Everyone knows you need to train and monitor your agents to help your company retain those valuable customers. But many businesses drop the customer experience ball when they forget about the importance of monitoring and tuning the self-service and communication technologies that sit in front of those agents. IT and contact center managers are invited to join this discussion about tips and techniques for optimizing the performance of speechbased contact center applications. Participants are encouraged to share examples of previous challenges and successful methods. The moderator will also share a list of ideas, examples and stories to keep the conversation rolling.

The VoiceXML Forum’ s Platform Certification Program has helped to stabilize and mature the speech and contact center industry by encouraging
the cross-vendor interoperability of platforms, tools, and applications. Certification has become a key speech system RFP criterion for savvy companies adopting speech. A new version of the test suite is now available along with a redesigned testing support system that greatly simplifies configuration and execution of the tests. In this session vendors will learn how to take advantage of the new tests, support software, and testing program to validate their products.

The rate of improvement in the richness and complexity of human-computer dialogue is slowing. Why? Doesn’ t the end user want more sophistication, power, and naturalness? Or, with current technology, is it just too difficult to make anything much more complicated? As developers, what incremental design upgrade could you use today? Do we know what steps to take? As a business paying for the development of a voice system, what more could a system do for your customers? If there is a will in the community to do better, then why aren’ t we? What should our next steps be?

Do you know what I know? It is widely known that the background and experience of voice interaction designers is diverse, which translates into
challenges for this emerging field, hiring decisions, and on-the-job training programs. This session will focus on the nature of competence in voice
interaction design, based on a job survey of designers and managers conducted in late 2008. Join us for an interactive discussion about the importance of specific skills, length of time required to become competent, and differences between designers’—and managers’—perceptions of competency in this role.

In this Sunrise Discussion we’ll lead a conversation on the desirability and challenges of speech interfaces for the car. We’ll discuss user needs and pain points. Topics for discussion include interaction and turn-taking methods; balance of modalities; user-initiated versus system-initiated; form factor: cell phone versus custom in-car solutions; and challenges for speech technology in vehicles. Come with your in-car design challenges and experiences to get the conversation moving to 60 MPH.

ECMAScript, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy, and other scripting languages are used to develop speech applicaitions. What are the strength and weaknesses of each scripting language. Exchange insights with other speech application developers about the do's and don't's of scripting languages.

The gethuman standard [www.gethuman.com] is a specification for how customer service phone systems and support should work. When the standard was published in 2006, gethuman promised to improve the customer experience of any organization that complies, making the telephone system and overall customer service easier, more effective and more efficient. Join us for a discussion of the current status of gethuman. Has the gethuman standard fulfilled its early promise? Which organizations have embraced this standard, and what benefits have they seen from it?

In this session we will suggest a checklist for issues needed to be taken into consideration when designing a multilingual speech system. We will go over them, make a prioritized list, and see how it differs from one organization to another. In addition, we will present the important do's and don'ts in designing a multilingual system and finally offer some insights from experience to give the audience a head start. The session will be interactive as much as possible to discuss and share actual problems and solutions for these challenges.

Now that speech applications are often running for a number of years, it has become critical to have a viable approach to measure performance
over time as well as to maintain and update an application. This session is targeted at both people responsible for their company's speech applications as well as speech application professionals who are in contact with the same speech application year after year. This session will outline the elements of a speech application’s lifecycle beyond initial go-live and present best practices. Attendees will be asked to share their best and worst experiences with maintaining applications.

The Java world has seen more than its fair share of telephony APIs come and go over the years. Things like JAIN SIP, JTAPI, Parlay, and JAIN SLEE have been showing up on product road maps for several years now, but SIP Servlets (just released as a 1.1) are finally seeing some industrywide adoption in application servers, both closed and open source. SIP servlets provide a simple API that mimics the widely deployed HTTP servlet model, allowing for Java developers to easily adapt their existing code and framework for communication applications. This session will provide a short introduction to SIP servlets and show people how they can quickly create a converged application using the technology. We will also show how you can quickly plug into simple web APIs using SOAP and REST to create quick web mashups.