SpeechTEK: What’s the buzz?

I wasn’t able to attend SpeechTEK NYC this year, but here’s what I gathered based on a couple of on-site sources and my own digging…

• Thumbs down on the first keynote speech, “Responding to the Voice of the Constituent/Customer” by David Gergen. Inviting a senior political analyst from CNN to open an event tailored to speech tech may not have been the best idea. Echoing throughout the conference were comments such as “Ten minutes of useful information with 40 minutes of fluff.” (Sounds like CNN…)
• Nuance Dragon Go! was a hit. This mobile app for the Apple iOS was released in mid-July and combines Nuance’s Dragon voice recognition engine with natural language understanding to deliver the most relevant content based on a user’s voice query.
• Microsoft Xbox with Kinect crashed. From what I’ve been told, it crashed “a few times” during the Microsoft Tellme VIP Event. Attendees got to witness what a core dump on a projection screen looks like. (Not good.)
• Vendors continue to push cloud and voice biometrics. Everybody’s still talking about the cloud. It’s here and it’s here to stay. Companies are utilizing it, and cloud vendors are making money from it. Get ready for the next big thing: voice biometrics.
• Interactions, Inc. — the best IVR nobody’s heard of? This Boston-based company just secured $12 million in new funding. Check out their online demos. Almost too good to be true?
• Smaller venue, less attendees, less tweets. Is the economy taking a toll on the industry?

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Tagged as: dragon go!, interactions, kinect, microsoft, nuance, speechtek