Re: ALL: Thoughts and thanks as the VBWG comes to a close REUNION?

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 11:08 PM, Jim Larson <jim42@larson-tech.com> wrote:

> Kazuyuki,
>
> I think this is a great idea, would you be willing to build a public
> mailing list?
>

Please let me check within the Team.

Kazuyuki



>
> Regards,
>
> -Jim
>
>
> On 9/28/2015 9:17 PM, Kazuyuki Ashimura wrote:
>
> Hi Dan, Jim Larson, Jim Barnett, Debbie and all,
>
> I really appreciate all the great contribution made by the group
> to the standardization of voice technologies, and am proud that
> I could be a part of the work.
>
> By the way, as you know, the group is closing, and that means
> the VBWG mailing lists (both the Member list and the public list)
> will be also closed.
>
> So I think maybe it would make sense to have another ML for
> the VBWG alumni to continue some more discussion, e.g, on
> the possible reunion at SpeechTEK.
>
> What d you think?
>
> Maybe the ML could be a public one.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kazuyuki
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 3:00 AM, Deborah Dahl <
> dahl@conversational-technologies.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Dan,
>> Thank you for your note and the summary of the VBWG's history and
>> specifications. The list of specifications that the group published is
>> indeed impressive, but it's even more impressive when you know, as the
>> VBWG
>> members well know, how each feature of each specification was thought
>> through, debated, revised, wordsmithed, and tested before it became part
>> of
>> the standard. The specifications look on the surface like a dry list of
>> MUST's and SHOULD's but that appearance doesn't do justice to the long
>> discussions and late nights in far-flung places that led to their
>> creation.
>> All of this hard work and care resulted in an incredible suite of
>> standards
>> that laid the foundation for a whole industry. I only wish Scott were
>> still
>> with us today to share these final thoughts.
>> Jim, that's a wonderful idea to get together at SpeechTEK. I would love to
>> do that.
>> best,
>> Debbie
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jim Larson [mailto:jim42@larson-tech.com]
>> Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 11:24 AM
>> To: Dan Burnett; w3c-voice-wg@w3.org (group); Voice Public List
>> Subject: Re: ALL: Thoughts and thanks as the VBWG comes to a close
>> REUNION?
>>
>> Thanks so much for participating in one of the most successful W3C working
>> groups.  We achieved much, had meetings at interesting places, and had
>> great
>> times.  Thank you.
>>
>> Let me know if you would like to get together for a WBWG reunion at
>> SpeechTEK, May 23-25 in Washington DC, by indicating your availability at
>> one or more of these dates/times:
>>
>> Sunday evening May 22
>> Monday lunch May 23
>> Monday evening May 23
>> Tuesday lunch May 24
>> Tuesday evening May 24
>> Wednesday lunch May 25
>> Wednesday evening May 25
>>
>> -Jim
>>
>>
>>
>> On 9/26/2015 8:26 AM, Dan Burnett wrote:
>> > To all of you who have helped in the Voice Browser Working Group over
>> > the years,
>> >
>> >
>> > The Voice Browser Working Group will be closing shortly, but before it
>> does, it is appropriate to say a few words about the history and
>> accomplishments of the WG.
>> >
>> > The Voice Browser Working Group has been one of the longest-running and
>> most successful working groups at W3C, both in terms of its list of
>> specifications and its whole-hearted adoption by its target industry.
>> >
>> > Under the leadership of Jim Larson, the group started in 1999 with a
>> goal
>> of taking the VoiceXML 1.0 specification created by IBM, Motorola, AT&T,
>> and
>> Lucent and turning it into a world-wide standard for call center
>> Interactive
>> Voice Response (IVR) application development.  At the time, nearly all
>> such
>> development was done using proprietary software running on custom hardware
>> systems that lived in phone company Central Office buildings.  Application
>> development took many months, and new features often took years to make
>> their way onto the hardware platforms.  Additionally, Automatic Speech
>> Recognition (ASR, or Voice Recognition) technology suffered from a lack of
>> adopted standards, even though many of the APIs were similar at their core
>> due to agreements in the research community.  This made it difficult for
>> competition in the ASR space to flourish since each ASR engine had a
>> custom
>> API that IVR application developers had to use.  Meanwhile, the HTML
>> revolution had already resulted in web-based customer self-care, so
>> enterprises already had a direct line between their customers and their
>> back
>> end systems.
>> > Enter VoiceXML.  Extending XML in the way W3C, at the time, was
>> extending
>> HTML, via XML elements with associated rendering semantics, VoiceXML
>> created
>> a uniform language for IVR development that allowed enterprises to use the
>> web model of resource naming, caching, and fetching for easy integration
>> with their existing back-end systems.  Simultaneously, it created a
>> uniform
>> way to use ASR engines, with a common lexical grammar language (SRGS), a
>> common semantic processor language (SISR), a common speech synthesis
>> language (SSML), a common lexicon format (PLS), and the amazing innovation
>> of a confidence threshold value constrained to range from 0 to 100,
>> something considered almost impossible at the time.
>> > Most importantly, VoiceXML introduced the web model to the automated
>> call
>> center environment, along with its associated reductions in development
>> cost
>> and time and deployment cost and time. Within a few short years
>> VoiceXML-based systems dominated the IVR industry, replacing all existing
>> custom hardware systems on the market with racks of general compute
>> servers
>> as we know them today.
>> > VoiceXML has been an unqualified success that has directly led to
>> continued innovations such as those from the cloud IVR industry of Twilio,
>> Tropo, and others.
>> >
>> > During its lifetime the Voice Browser produced the following
>> specifications:
>> >
>> > Recommendations:
>> > ----------------
>> > 2015-09-01
>> > State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control
>> > Abstraction http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/
>> >
>> > 2011-07-05
>> > Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/ccxml/
>> >
>> > 2010-09-07
>> > Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis11/
>> >
>> > 2008-10-14
>> > Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/pronunciation-lexicon/
>> >
>> > 2007-06-19
>> > Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 2.1
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml21/
>> >
>> > 2007-04-05
>> > Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition (SISR) Version 1.0
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/semantic-interpretation/
>> >
>> > 2004-09-07
>> > Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.0
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis
>> >
>> > 2004-03-16
>> > Speech Recognition Grammar Specification Version 1.0
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar
>> >
>> > 2004-03-16
>> > Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) Version 2.0
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml20
>> >
>> > Group Notes:
>> > ------------
>> > 2015-08-11
>> > DOM Event I/O Processor for SCXML
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml-dom-iop/
>> >
>> > 2015-08-11
>> > XPath Data Model for SCXML
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml-xpath-dm/
>> >
>> > 2009-12-08
>> > Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/mw4d-roadmap/
>> >
>> > 2005-05-26
>> > SSML 1.0 say-as attribute values
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/ssml-sayas
>> >
>> > 1998-01-28
>> > Voice Browsers
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-voice
>> >
>> >
>> > Working Drafts:
>> > -------------
>> > 2010-12-16
>> > Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml30/
>> >
>> >
>> > I would personally like to thank all the members of the Voice Browser
>> > Working Group over the years, with special mention to
>> > - Jim Barnett and his team for helping us finish SCXML, our final
>> > Recommendation,
>> > - Kaz Ashimura for his years of dedicated work as our Team Contact,
>> > and
>> > - Jim Larson and our recently departed friend, Scott McGlashan, for
>> their
>> outstanding vision and leadership.
>> >
>> > Thank you.
>> >
>> >
>> > Dan Burnett
>> > Chair, Voice Browser Working Group
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Kaz Ashimura, W3C Staff Contact for Auto, WoT, TV, MMI, Voice and Geo
> Tel: +81 3 3516 2504
>
>
>


-- 
Kaz Ashimura, W3C Staff Contact for Auto, WoT, TV, MMI, Voice and Geo
Tel: +81 3 3516 2504