Call for Participation:  Workshop on Advanced Dialogs

 

The VoiceXML Forum is holding a four-hour workshop on advanced dialogs for voice-activated systems on February 22, 2007 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the San Francisco Hilton & Towers.  The purpose of the workshop is to promote technology exchange among spoken language experts and to explore what dialog specification concepts should be standardized for deploying advanced voice-activated services.

 

The Workshop on Advanced Dialogs is supported by the VoiceXML Forum Tools Committee and will held as part of SpeechTEK West 2007 (but will not be available to general SpeechTEK participants).  To receive an invitation, please submit a one-page position paper stating your view on at least one of the following questions:

 

    1.  What new language constructs are needed to support advanced dialogs?

 

    2.  Where do standard programming languages such as VoiceXML, Java, JSP etc., need to be extended or enhanced to better support advanced dialogs?

 

    3.  What is the best approach (plan-based reasoning, rule-based systems, goal-oriented design, world modeling, etc.), perhaps given a particular circumstance, for creating advanced voice-activated services and why?

 

    4.  Do you have an example of a case where an advanced dialog was successfully deployed for live customers?  What dialog design principles made this deployment a success?

 

Accepted position papers will be published at www.voicexml.org and participants will be invited to briefly summarize their paper (no slides required) at the workshop.  Attendees will analyze alternative approaches and suggest recommendations for how standards should proceed for supporting advanced dialogs.

 

Papers should be sent to david(AT)speechphone.com by December 15, 2006.  A minimum one-day SpeechTEK registration is required for workshop participants (http://www.speechtek.com).

 

Review Committee:

Jim Larson – Co-chair W3C Voice Browser Working Group

Bill Scholz – VoiceXML Tools Committee

John Tadlock – AT&T

David Thomson – VoiceXML Tools Committee

 

 

Charter:  The Advanced Dialog Working Group (part of the VoiceXML Forum Tools Committee) has the following objectives:

 

    1.  To define the XML-based languages needed to represent Advanced Dialogs and implement applications.

 

    2.  To provide input to the VoiceXML Forum Metalanguage group regarding what is needed to allow the metalanguage specification to be able to support Advanced Dialogs.

 

    3.  To encourage standardization and adoption of Advanced Dialog concepts.

 

    4.  To speed the transfer of Advanced Dialog concepts from research to industry.

 

Advanced Dialog:  A voice user interface specification that cannot efficiently be represented by a finite state machine.

 

Dates: 

                  Paper submission:  December 15, 2006

                  Acceptance notification:  December 22, 2006

                  Workshop:  February 22, 2007