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SpeechTEK Europe 2010
26 - 27 May 2010 • Copthorne Tara Hotel • London, UK
SpeechTEK University • 25 May 2010
SpeechTEK Europe 2010 - Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Track A
Listening to Your Customers: How Companies can Mobilise Consumers as Co-creators and Innovators
09:00 - 10:00
Charles Leadbeater, Author and Strategist

Charlie Leadbeater describes the new phenomenon of creativity driven by social media, and explores ways in which passionate, knowledgeable consumers can generate mass creative collaboration. Before we explore the detail of voice and speech applications, this thoughtprovoking keynote will underline the importance of customer relationships, and of capitalising on communication channels with your customers.

Charlie Leadbeater is a leading authority on innovation and strategy. He has advised companies, cities and governments. He is a special adviser on Competitiveness and the New Economy to the European Commission, and is reportedly former Prime Minister Tony Blair's favourite corporate thinker. We-think, his latest book, charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation.

Sponsored By
Coffee break in the Exhibition Hall
10:00 - 10:30
A101 – IVR Challenge in New Markets
10:30 - 11:15

This session presents two birds’ eye views of the pros and cons of entering new markets. Darla Tucker describes how self service automation has become a vehicle for achieving reduced cost while providing a solid ROI, and how cultural differences drive a need for differentiation among multiple language deployments. Julia Khitrova explores the challenges of first deployments in the new regional IVR market – Russia. Hear how to overcome the distrust in ASR performance, concerns about the expense of voice-enabled deployments, and how to overcome the peculiarities of synthesising and recognising a local language.

Strategies for Global Customer Service
Darla Tucker, Director, Strategic Customer Solutions - Convergys
Developing New Markets for IVR
MODERATOR: Rosana Duce, VP International Sales - Loquendo
Julia Khitrova, VP Sales & Marketing - Speech Technology Center
A102 – Making IVR Work
11:30 - 12:15
MODERATOR: Rosana Duce, VP International Sales - Loquendo

The Customer Experience Foundation reports that UK contact centres fail to measure the customer and business impact of technology failures.  Trevor Richer and Morris Pentel’s presentation identifies what can be done to minimise this problem. Annabelle Goymer describes Transport for London’s experiences with automated voice technology applications that assist customers to make over 24 million trips a day and shares experiences to help you improve your own voice technology applications.

IVR failure and Speech Quality Cost Your Contact Centre Dearly
Trevor Richer, Marketing Manager - Empirix
Morris Pentel, Chairman - Customer Experience Foundation
Travelling in Our Customers' Shoes
Annabelle Goymer, Contact Centre Transformation Programme Manager - Transport for London (TfL)
Lunch
12:15 - 13:45
A103 – Voice User Interface Design: Major Issues
13:45 - 14:30
MODERATOR: Caroline Leathem, Interaction Specialist - Verizon Business EMEA

Learn how to avoid disputes between customer employees and VUI designers by pinpointing common pitfalls in the communication between them, and identify ways to resolve conflicts with and disagreements between application designers and implementers. Crafting good error-handling prompts is a key part in the overall success of IVR self-service applications. Discover two alternative strategies for crafting error-handling prompts, as well as the pros and cons of each approach.

The Eternal Battle Between the VUI Designer and the Customer
Maria Aretoulaki, Director / VUI Design Consultant - DialogCONNECTION Ltd (UK)
A Fine Balance: What Callers Need to Know about Errors
Susan Hura, Principal - SpeechUsability
A104 – Key Enterprise Directions
14:45 - 15:30
MODERATOR: James Larson, Vice President - Larson Technical Services

Key management decisions include whether speech applications should be hosted on premise or offsite by a hosting company, and how to embrace unified communications within the enterprise. John Amein explains the advantages and disadvantages of hosted and on premise solutions. Detlev Artelt describes how unified communications will change the enterprise IT structure and affect the development and deployment of speech technology applications, how the various  channels of electronic communication are integrated and what this means to an enterprise.

Unified Communication: (UC) Use Speech for Smarter Working
Detlev Artelt, CEO - Aixvox GmbH & Voice Compass Team
Hosted or Premise? Why Choose!
John Amein, Vice President - ID R&D
Sponsored By
Coffee break in the Exhibition Hall
15:30 - 16:00
A105 – The Future of Speech in Europe
16:00 - 17:00
MODERATOR: Rosana Duce, VP International Sales - Loquendo

Experienced analysts provide their insights about speech deployments in Europe. Dimension Data’s Alignment Index for Speech Self-Service survey compares and measures consumer, vendor and enterprise perceptions of speech systems. The survey identifies differences in perceptions, tracks levels of alignment among the three constituent groups over time, and compares global consumer behaviours and attitudes to speech solutions. Ovum provides insight into the types of speech applications being deployed today and the timeframes for realising ROI.

Alignment Index for Speech Self-Service
Martin Dove, Managing Director, Customer Interactive Solutions - Dimension Data
Trends Shaping the Enterprise Speech Solutions Market
Daniel Hong, Research Director & VP - Forrester Research
Sponsored By
Drinks Reception
17:00 - 18:00

Help us celebrate the launch of SpeechTEK Europe at our inaugural networking reception! Join us for informal drinks and business networking with your speech industry peers from around the world.

Track B
Listening to Your Customers: How Companies can Mobilise Consumers as Co-creators and Innovators
09:00 - 10:00
Charles Leadbeater, Author and Strategist

Charlie Leadbeater describes the new phenomenon of creativity driven by social media, and explores ways in which passionate, knowledgeable consumers can generate mass creative collaboration. Before we explore the detail of voice and speech applications, this thoughtprovoking keynote will underline the importance of customer relationships, and of capitalising on communication channels with your customers.

Charlie Leadbeater is a leading authority on innovation and strategy. He has advised companies, cities and governments. He is a special adviser on Competitiveness and the New Economy to the European Commission, and is reportedly former Prime Minister Tony Blair's favourite corporate thinker. We-think, his latest book, charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation.

Sponsored By
Coffee break in the Exhibition Hall
10:00 - 10:30
B101 – Video: The Next Level of Automated Customer Service
10:30 - 11:15
MODERATOR: Detlev Artelt, CEO - Aixvox GmbH & Voice Compass Team

Voice alone can only tell customers about a service, product, or repair strategy. Video shows them! Hear how two of Europe’s leading organisations have successfully added video into their existing speech applications to deliver new levels of customer experience. Learn how video self-service in mobile banking, interactive advertising, and airline check-in offer substantial cost savings and improved customer care. Hear the experiences of an interactive voice and video response (IVVR) that offers video calling-based customer care to 8.5 million customers.

Voice and Video Customer Service in Action!
Stefan Dietrich, Self Service Tech Ops Lead for EMEA, Advanced Technology Group - Avaya
Introducing Video IVR – A New Era in Mobile Interactions
Damian Kelly, VP Strategic Development - SpeechStorm
B102 – Using Voice Biometrics
11:30 - 12:15
MODERATOR: Caroline Leathem, Interaction Specialist - Verizon Business EMEA

Voice biometric systems identify speakers and verify that speakers are who they claim to be, thereby minimising fraud and theft. Learn how to evaluate these systems using a clear step-by-step evaluation methodology based on best practices. Jim Cook’s presentation further illustrates the capabilities of voice biometrics, with a case study
demonstrating how voice biometrics can be used to replace cumbersome and time-consuming handwritten signatures on physical documents with an electronic signature linking the transaction to the person doing the signing.

Evaluating Voice Biometrics Technology
Almog Aley-Raz, CEO - PerSay
Closing More Business Using Biometrics
Nik Stanbridge, Director of Product Marketing - VoiceVault
Lunch
12:15 - 13:45
B103 – Developing Multimodal Applications
13:45 - 14:30
MODERATOR: James Larson, Vice President - Larson Technical Services

Learn what multimodal mashups are, why they are popular, and how speech recognition technologies are available to mashups. This fast-paced session will be full of practical examples to help you discover how easy it is to create mashups that use speech. Then learn about an open standards-based approach for deploying multimodal applications on a variety of mobile devices to seamlessly leverage sensory and other on-device peripherals. See the convenience of speech, touch/tap,location, and gesture input for practical multimodal applications.

Beyond VoiceXML—Speech Mashups
Daniel Burnett, President - StandardsPlay
Enterprise Mobility: Developing and Deploying Portable Multimodal Applications
Raj Tumuluri, President - Openstream Inc.
B104 – Developing Multilingual Applications
14:45 - 15:30
MODERATOR: Nava Shaked, Head of Multidisiplinary studies - HIT Holon Institute of Technology. Israel

Multinational organisations and countries and regions with many cultures require multilingual applications. This session gives you a bird’s eye view of how to design, implement, and test multilingual applications, with video clips of usability studies from Europe, the USA and emerging markets in Africa. Topics include how to use standard languages to develop multilingual speech applications, how to conduct usability tests in multiple languages, and how to deal with crosscultural attitudes about IVR and speech systems.

Will it Work in Swahili? Multilingual Design and Usability Testing
David Attwater, Senior Scientist - Enterprise Integration Group
Multilingual Voice Applications: Issues and Practical Solutions
Paolo Baggia, Director of International Standards - Loquendo
Sponsored By
Coffee break in the Exhibition Hall
15:30 - 16:00
B105 – New W3C Language Standards for Developing Speech Applications
16:00 - 17:00
MODERATOR: James Larson, Vice President - Larson Technical Services

This session introduces three new, powerful languages from the W3C for developing speech applications:

  • Speech Synthesis Markup Language 1.0 (SSML 1.1) now provides better support for a broader set of natural (human) languages;
  • Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS 1.0) enables interoperable specifications of pronunciation information for both speech synthesis and speech recognition engines; and
  • State Chart XML (SCXML) is a general-purpose event-based state machine language used to model both voice only and multimodal dialogues.
Using TTS Standards
Davide Bonardo, Senior TTS Software Architect, Loquendo Technologies - Loquendo
Using State Chart XML for Dialog and Task Management
Rahul Akolkar - IBM Research
Sponsored By
Drinks Reception
17:00 - 18:00

Help us celebrate the launch of SpeechTEK Europe at our inaugural networking reception! Join us for informal drinks and business networking with your speech industry peers from around the world.




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