Demystify, gather and develop. Those are the three main goals of this new weblog devoted to self-service phone applications in and around Belgium.
In Belgium, and especially in Flanders, speech technology has epitomised the Internet boom as well as the dot com crash more than in any other European country. The rise and fall of LHSP has led to extreme perceptions about speech technology, that were totally disconnected from reality. Five years ago, at the height of the stock market, speech technology was seen as the chicken with the golden egg, about to conquer the world in no time. A year later, morose but highly exaggerated visions of vaporware and empty boxes were all that remained in many people’s minds.
Now that the psychological dust has hopefully settled, this weblog wants to shed a realistic light on the current status of speech technology, explaining what’s working, what’s not, and above all, why. This is what we mean by demystifying speech technology.
The second goal of this initiative is to bring together all stakeholders of the local speech technology community – a.k.a. the ecosystem, to use a sexier yet applicable term. Our focus will be on speech-driven phone applications, because that’s where today’s speech technology brings most economic value. This blog will comment on the producers, vendors, users, customers, and implementors of speech technology in the self-service contact center field. It will to do so in a down-to-earth way, by shunning hype, speculation and vaporware as much as possible, and by focusing instead on real applications used by real people like you and me. On the other hand, this blog does not limit itself to strictly objective and scientific posts, far from it. For one thing, the subjectivity of man-machine interaction in the voice user interface is bound to impede this somehow.
The third and most important goal of this weblog is to contribute our five cents to the development of a thriving speech technology industry in Flanders and Belgium. And while Prompt! Speech Applications certainly has its part to play as a provider of end applications, it cannot do so without tool vendors, platform providers, customers and, why not, direct competitors.
We therefore invite all members of the community to contribute to this blog. Feel free to comment, or become a guest author yourself.
So, welcome, and let the discussion begin!