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=20
working groups.  We achieved much, had meetings at interesting places,=20
and had great times.  Thank you.

Let me know if you would like to get together for a WBWG reunion at=20
SpeechTEK, May 23-25 in Washington DC, by indicating your availability=20
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 t=
he 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 accompli=
shments 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 spec=
ifications and its whole-hearted adoption by its target industry.
>
> Under the leadership of Jim Larson, the group started in 1999 with a go=
al 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 I=
nteractive Voice Response (IVR) application development.  At the time, ne=
arly all such development was done using proprietary software running on =
custom hardware systems that lived in phone company Central Office buildi=
ngs.  Application development took many months, and new features often to=
ok years to make their way onto the hardware platforms.  Additionally, Au=
tomatic Speech Recognition (ASR, or Voice Recognition) technology suffere=
d from a lack of adopted standards, even though many of the APIs were sim=
ilar at their core due to agreements in the research community.  This mad=
e it difficult for competition in the ASR space to flourish since each AS=
R engine had a custom API that IVR application developers had to use.  Me=
anwhile, the HTML revolution had already resulted in web-based customer s=
elf-care, so enterprises already had a direct line between their customer=
s and their back end systems.
> Enter VoiceXML.  Extending XML in the way W3C, at the time, was extendi=
ng HTML, via XML elements with associated rendering semantics, VoiceXML c=
reated a uniform language for IVR development that allowed enterprises to=
 use the web model of resource naming, caching, and fetching for easy int=
egration with their existing back-end systems.  Simultaneously, it create=
d a uniform way to use ASR engines, with a common lexical grammar languag=
e (SRGS), a common semantic processor language (SISR), a common speech sy=
nthesis language (SSML), a common lexicon format (PLS), and the amazing i=
nnovation 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 ca=
ll center environment, along with its associated reductions in developmen=
t cost and time and deployment cost and time. Within a few short years Vo=
iceXML-based systems dominated the IVR industry, replacing all existing c=
ustom hardware systems on the market with racks of general compute server=
s as we know them today.
> VoiceXML has been an unqualified success that has directly led to conti=
nued innovations such as those from the cloud IVR industry of Twilio, Tro=
po, and others.
>
> During its lifetime the Voice Browser produced the following specificat=
ions:
>
> 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 W=
orking Group over the years, with special mention to
> - Jim Barnett and his team for helping us finish SCXML, our final Recom=
mendation,
> - Kaz Ashimura for his years of dedicated work as our Team Contact, and=

> - Jim Larson and our recently departed friend, Scott McGlashan, for the=
ir outstanding vision and leadership.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> Dan Burnett
> Chair, Voice Browser Working Group
>