SpeechTEK West Announces Featured Keynotes for 2007 San Francisco Conference

Business Wire, Jan 18, 2007

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The 2007 conference theme for SpeechTEK West is "Unleashing the Potential of Speech." Set to keynote the conference, February 21-23 at the Hilton San Francisco, are business leaders who have actually done some of that unleashing.

Mike McCue, CEO and co-founder of Tellme Networks, and Jeffrey Rayport, founder and chairman of Marketspace LLC, will present their perspectives on the state of the industry and the opportunities that lie ahead as organizations discover new and better ways to improve customer service and business operations using speech technology.

"Mike McCue and Jeffrey Rayport are among the innovators that people in the speech technology industry turn to for leadership," says Tom Hogan, president of Information Today, organizer and producer of the SpeechTEK Conferences and Expositions. "The entire SpeechTEK conference will provide attendees with insights and real-world perspectives they can actually use in their own organizations."

SpeechTEK West will include four keynote presentations, each with a unique perspective on how speech is being used to improve business services and operations.

Bringing Voice to the Mobile Customer

Mike McCue, CEO and co-founder, Tellme Networks

Thursday, February 22, 8:30 AM

As mobility increases and more and more people use speech technology every day over the telephone, what will make voice services a valued convenience and an essential part of every day life? How does growing mobile usage impact the evolution of voice services? In a powerful look into the future, Tellme Networks founder Mike McCue, former vice president of technology for Netscape, will discuss where the opportunities for voice are expanding and contracting.

Tellme Networks was founded in 1999 and in 2000 launched the world's first Internet platform to deliver Web data to anyone over any telephone.

Speech Leads the Way: The New Frontier in Service Automation

Jeffrey Rayport, chairman, Marketspace LLC

Friday, February 23, 8:30 AM

Nowhere is the unfolding story of automation in services more compelling than in speech automation, says Rayport, where speech is leading the way as the frontier of service automation is shifting. Rayport will discuss why it is crucial to design systems that appeal to customers on emotional dimensions, promote brand recognition and build lasting relationships between companies and customers.

Jeffery Rayport was a faculty member at the Harvard Business School for nearly a decade before founding Marketspace LLC, a strategic advisor to service-oriented companies. He developed and taught the first e-commerce course in the United States.

Rayport's most recent book, "Best Face Forward: Why Companies Must Improve Their Service Interfaces with Customers," is published by Harvard Business School Press.

The 2007 SpeechTEK Conference will open Wednesday, February 21 with a panel discussion featuring major speech technology customers and close on Friday with an overview of the state of the speech technology industry and what lies ahead.

The Customers Speak Out!

Moderated by Bill Meisel, president, TMA Associates and conference chair

Wednesday, February 21, 8:30 AM

Conference chairman Bill Meisel will moderate a panel of major customers addressing how they selected and deployed speech applications. Each of the panelists has gone through the procurement, deployment, and implementation of speech products and will be discussing their real-world experiences.

Wha'd You Say? Speech Applications and Technology Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Produced and organized by the Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS)

Friday, February 23, 3:15 PM

The AVIOS board and membership bring their extensive real-world experiences to a discussion of the key market and technical issues facing the speech technology industry today.

Additional information about SpeechTEK West and registration is available at www.speechtek.com

About SpeechTEK

Launched in 1995, SpeechTEK Expositions and Educational Conferences (www.speechtek.com) are recognized worldwide as the industry's premier events focusing on products, services, applications, solutions and innovations using speech technologies. Held twice a year in New York and San Francisco, the trade shows and educational conferences attract a global network of speech technology providers and enterprise network customers who are developing and implementing speech solutions.

About Information Today

Information Today is the parent company of SpeechTEK and Speech Technology Magazine. Information Today, Inc. (ITI) is a leading publisher and conference organizer in the information and knowledge management industries. The company is widely known as the publisher of premier information and knowledge management titles such as Information Today, Computers in Libraries, ONLINE, MultiMedia & Internet@Schools, CRM, Searcher, KMWorld, and EContent. ITI is also the sponsor and organizer of many industry conferences, including WebSearch University, KMWorld & Intranets, Internet Librarian, Computers in Libraries, Enterprise Search Summit, and Streaming Media.