Upcoming Users Group Meeting Offers Insight into VoiceXML Progress and Achievements

By Kurt Kolok,

The VoiceXML Forum will sponsor a Users Group Meeting (UGM) on 31 October 2002 at the 8th Annual SpeechTEK International Expo and Educational Conference in New York City. The UGM is designed to provide a true users group environment by promoting open discussion and Q & A sessions to discuss critical information related to VoiceXML applications and implementations.

The UGM will begin with an update on Forum activities and milestones through a 'State of the Forum' presentation. Following this opening, some of the forum's top industry experts will lead four 45-minute discussions on topics such as VoiceXML conformance and interoperability, VoiceXML design and implementation, SSML and CCXML. The sessions will run sequentially to allow attendees the opportunity to participate and provide input into each session.

VoiceXML expert, Ken Rehor will speak on VoiceXML Conformance and Portability. His presentation will discuss features of VoiceXML that are clearly marked in the specification as platform-specific. This presentation will focus on the fact that the principle design goal of VoiceXML is the promotion of service portability across implementation platforms as a common language for content providers, tool providers and platform providers. In this session the technology and policy issues surrounding conformance testing will also be discussed.

Another of the event's speakers, VoiceGenie's Henry Lum, will focus on the real-world challenges that other industry peers are facing when designing and implementing VoiceXML applications. The goal of this session will be to discuss practical information that will help attendees build usable, resilient, and portable applications. The session will also address questions surrounding how one makes an application portable and what kinds of problems need to be solved in order to make applications work. In Henry's words, "Bring your questions and get your answers".

The W3C Speech Synthesis specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/) defines a markup language, called SSML, for prompting users via a combination of prerecorded speech, synthetic speech and music. The essential role of the SSML is to give authors of synthesizable content a standard way to control aspects of speech output such as pronunciation, volume, pitch, rate, etc. across different synthesis-capable platforms. Loquendo's Paolo Baggia will be leading a session on this topic that will provide an overview of the current specification by focusing on the major features, a brief update on the publication roadmap and will conclude with a discussion on future evolution. This session will also include an online demonstration of some of the features covered by SSML.

CCXML is designed to provide telephony call control support for VoiceXML or other dialog systems. CCXML has been designed to complement and integrate with a VoiceXML system. A draft CCXML specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/ccxml/) was recently published by the W3C. Voxeo's RJ Auburn will be leading a session on CCXML that will provide an overview of the current specification by focusing on the major features, a brief update on the publication roadmap and will conclude with a discussion on future evolution.

There has been an increasing demand for the Forum to provide speakers at different industry events including User Group events throughout the year. As the Forum's president, Bill Dykas, pointed out in a recent press release that the VXML Forum sponsored one event in 2001, two events in 2002 and looking to the future plans to sponsor multiple, geographically dispersed events to serve the interests of the worldwide VoiceXML community.

The Forum's Education Committee is currently in the process of developing a 'speaker's bureau' that will allow the Forum to send a speaker representative on a minute's notice to events and opportunities throughout Europe and the Americas. The Education Committee will also be working with the Marketing Committee to provide these speakers with readily available topic summaries and materials. This will be a significant step in achieving the Forum's goals of promoting adoption and implementation of the VXML specifications.

A new technology subgroup has recently formed to address the issue of VoiceXML tools compatibility. The Tools Group has begun looking at existing tools to find ways to make them more compatible or if necessary to develop new tools to meet compatibility needs. The Tools Group chair, David Thomson, will be speaking on the tools initiative during a Wednesday SpeechTEK session entitled "Show and Tell; VoiceXML Tools".

The upcoming UGM will be the Forum's fourth. SpeechTEK provides an ideal backdrop for a UGM, as it is renowned as the world's premier event dedicated exclusively to speech products, applications and solutions. For more information on the VoiceXML Forum, or about the upcoming Users Group Meeting, please visit www.voicexml.org or contact the Forum's Administrative Team ().

For all inquiries please contact:
Brett McDowellProgram Manager, VoiceXML Forum
c/o IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO),

http://www.voicexml.org
+ 1 732 465 6464

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