RJ Auburn - One Step Beyond

We made some really good progress last week on the CCXML Implementation Report. It looks like we have our test harness template built out and most of the assertions are complete. With luck we should be able to publish the report soon and wrap up the last call.

Ahh, the week after SpeechTek. This is where you realize just how much work you did not get done in the prior week and how much work you created for yourself with meetings with customers and partners. At least I am mostly caught up on e-mail…

Sitting here at JFK airport I am reminded of how much I love the iTunes music sharing feature. I am currently listening to some random Mac user’s music collection that I have never met before who is also sitting here tired and waiting for their delayed flight.

It’s interesting to try and figure out what kind of person they are based on their musical tastes. “Shana Williams” seems to be into a bunch of Asian Pop (Lots of Anime soundtracks) mixed with a bunch of just about everything from classic rock to rap. While this is not my normal music taste it’s somewhat fun to listen in on someone else’s collection.

Well anyway, my flight is boarding and the music has gone offline. I had better got on my way home.

This year at SpeechTek there was a great example of a marketing mistake that no company should ever make. In the conference bag there was a set of fridge magnets with a bunch of telephony/speech words on them. I look one look at this and know that it was some of the best swag I had gotten at the show. The only problem with it is that nowhere does it say what company provided it! I have this great thing and no idea who gave it to me. This was a great chance for a company to impress upon me their brand name and they totally blew it. Next time please include a logo if you want the advertising to be effective ;-)

Wow, what a week! This was a great year for us at SpeechTek. Our booth was kept very full with customer and partner meetings and everyone wanted the Vespa that we were giving away ;-) Of course the first comment out of most people was “Wow! My (wife|husband) would KILL me! I want it!”

The poker game we had with a few partners and customers at the W Times Square was a blast and kept me up WAY too late last night. I only hope the students in my class this morning did not notice my lack of sleep. All I can say is thank god I don’t drink otherwise I would have really been in trouble ;-)

Tomorrow I am going to be in a W3C CCXML face to face meeting all day as we continue to move CCXML to the Candidate Recommendation stage. I am torn between getting a bunch of prep work for the meeting done tonight and being a$$ tired in the morning or going to bed early and being fully rested… I think I might take the sleep this time around.

As I promised in my sessions this week here are copies of all the presentations that I have given at SpeechTek this week:

Monday:

1PM-5PM - Telephony Meets the Web - pdf - powerpoint

Wednesday:

10AM-12PM - Speech Applications, Languages and Techniques - pdf
1PM-3PM - Latest Languages for Developing Speech Applications - pdf

Well it’s monday morning and SpeechTek is just about to get underway. This is going to be by far my busiest year ever here at SpeechTek as I am presenting at 4 sessions this week. My CEO Jonathan Tayor is also going to be presenting at two sessions this year. You can the full list of what we are doing this week in our announcement.

We also announced VoiceCenter 6 today with tons of new features and capabilities including MRCP, CCXML 1.0 (Last call working draft) SIP Server Support, fully VoiceXML 2.0 certified and VoiceXML 2.1 Extensions, CallXML 3.0 and a Dialogic Card based SIP Gateway. This release has been long in the making and it’s great to finally get that out to the world. A big thanks goes out to all the guys on the engineering team that have spent many long nights to make this possible.

Oh ya, and in case you missed it we had a kick ass quarter making this 6 in a row now that we have been profitable.

Anyway, I hope to see some of you folks today at my “Telephony Meets the Web” session from 1:00 pm - 5:30 pm or at the “Hosting Services for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises” session from 3:15 pm - 4:00 pm (yes, I am double booked but my co-presenters in the half day session will be helping me here here).