Thursday 31 March 2011

SpeechTEK.com

SpeechTEK Europe 2011
25 - 26 May 2011 • Copthorne Tara Hotel • London, UK
SpeechTEK University • 24 May 2011
SpeechTEK University - Tuesday, 24 May 2011
W1 – Hola! Bonjour! Shalom! Are you ready? Challenges in designing and deploying multilingual speech applications
10:00 - 13:00
Sondra Ahlén, Principal VUI Consultant/Owner - SAVIC
Nava Shaked, CEO - Brit Business Technologies Ltd (BBT)

The design and deployment of multilingual speech applications for speakers of multiple languages presents many challenges. Issues range from defining business and user requirements, to incorporating cultural, political and linguistic knowledge, and handling technical aspects such as special characters and language-specific acoustic models.  Whatever your background – whether novice or expert, multilingual or not – this workshop explores the key challenges encountered when deploying a multilingual speech application. Bring your laptop for hands-on examples and collaborative exercises.

W2 – Speech recognition - the underlying technology
10:00 - 13:00
Ami Moyal, Head of Afeka Center for Language Processing - Afeka Academic College of Engineering

Widely used speech recognition engines have various operational modes: grammar-based recognition, Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition (LVSCR, as used in dictation and speech transcription), and keyword spotting. This workshop looks under the covers of speech recognition engines to learn how they work and understand the fundamentals of key algorithms. Learn which metrics to use for evaluating the performance of your speech recognition engine. Learn how application developers can improve performance by carefully specifying grammars. Examples and exercises will focus on grammar structur and its influence on the recognition operation and on Human-Machine Interaction.

W3 – Adding speech to your own android application
14:00 - 17:00
Diego Zanin, Senior Product Engineer - Loquendo

Android is the first mobile platform that supports the use of standard mechanisms to integrate speech into applications, and provides default resources to do it. Developers can make a speech-enabled application and any Android user is ready to use it. This workshop helps you learn how to access the Android speech synthesis and speech recognition engines. Discover how to use alternative engines and technologies from thirdparty providers, and review tips and guidelines for mobile Vocal User Interfaces on Android.

W4 – Introduction to speech technologies
14:00 - 17:00
James Larson, Vice President - Larson Technical Services

Designed for attendees new to the speech technology arena, this tutorial provides an overview of today’s key speech technologies. What are the major types of speech recognition engines? Do speaker identification and verification really work? Is there a need for touchtone recognition in interactive voice response systems? Who drives the speech dialogue – the user, the computer, or both? Where are natural language processing technologies, such as natural language recognition, machine translation, response generation, and summarisation used today? Should you consider speech applications on mobile devices? Untangle the voice standards alphabet: VoiceXML, SSML, SRGS, CCXML, PLS, and SCXML. Take home a thorough grounding in speech technology.