geekSpeak recording: Speech Server with Michael Dunn

In this geekSpeak (or maybe we should say "geekSpeech") we explore Microsoft Speech Server technologies, focusing on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

After covering how Speech Server is now incorporated into OCS 2007, we talk about how it now supports industry standards for building IVR applications like SALT and VoiceXML. Michael shows a cool demo of creating a voice response workflow using the new designers based on Windows Workflow Foundation, which is incredibly easy to use.

It's pretty exciting to see how integrated this technology is with .NET so you can do things like utilize WCF, make web service calls, reuse a data access or business logic layer, program in C# or VB, etc.

Some great quesitons came through on the geekSpeak including using Speech Server with robotics as well as how to manage grammar, keywords, and concept answers. Michael also helps us understand considerations for  design your voice UI around speech recognition versus DTMF (touch-tones).

We also touch on testing approaches as well as how to work with systems such as Skype and Vonage.

For more resources on Speech Server technologies, go to http://www.microsoft.com/speech as well as Michael's blog http://gotspeech.net/blogs/michaeldunn .

Let us know through here and the geekSpeak blog what you'd like to see geekSpeaks in the future cover.