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

Jim Larson <[email protected]> Tue, 29 Sep 2015 07:08:06 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.voice
Message-ID <[email protected]>
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Kazuyuki,

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

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 
> <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> 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:[email protected]
>     <mailto:[email protected]>]
>     Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 11:24 AM
>     To: Dan Burnett; [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
>     (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
>


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    <div class=3D"moz-cite-prefix">Kazuyuki,<br>
      <br>
      I think this is a great idea, would you be willing to build a
      public mailing list?<br>
      <br>
      Regards,<br>
      <br>
      -Jim<br>
      <br>
      On 9/28/2015 9:17 PM, Kazuyuki Ashimura wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote
cite=3D"mid:[email protected]=
l.com"
      type=3D"cite">
      <div dir=3D"ltr">Hi Dan, Jim Larson, Jim Barnett, Debbie and all,
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div>I really appreciate all the great contribution made by the
          group<br>
        </div>
        <div>to the standardization of voice technologies, and am proud
          that</div>
        <div>I could be a part of the work.</div>
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div>By the way, as you know, the group is closing, and that
          means</div>
        <div>the VBWG mailing lists (both the Member list and the public
          list)</div>
        <div>will be also closed.</div>
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div>So I think maybe it would make sense to have another ML for<=
/div>
        <div>the VBWG alumni to continue some more discussion, e.g, on</d=
iv>
        <div>the possible reunion at SpeechTEK.</div>
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div>What d you think?</div>
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div>Maybe the ML could be a public one.</div>
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div>Thanks,</div>
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div>Kazuyuki</div>
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div><br>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class=3D"gmail_extra"><br>
        <div class=3D"gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 3:00 AM,
          Deborah Dahl <span dir=3D"ltr">&lt;<a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
              href=3D"mailto:[email protected]"
              target=3D"_blank">[email protected]</a>&=
gt;</span>
          wrote:<br>
          <blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"margin:0 0 0
            .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Dear Dan,<b=
r>
            Thank you for your note and the summary of the VBWG's
            history and<br>
            specifications. The list of specifications that the group
            published is<br>
            indeed impressive, but it's even more impressive when you
            know, as the VBWG<br>
            members well know, how each feature of each specification
            was thought<br>
            through, debated, revised, wordsmithed, and tested before it
            became part of<br>
            the standard. The specifications look on the surface like a
            dry list of<br>
            MUST's and SHOULD's but that appearance doesn't do justice
            to the long<br>
            discussions and late nights in far-flung places that led to
            their creation.<br>
            All of this hard work and care resulted in an incredible
            suite of standards<br>
            that laid the foundation for a whole industry. I only wish
            Scott were still<br>
            with us today to share these final thoughts.<br>
            Jim, that's a wonderful idea to get together at SpeechTEK. I
            would love to<br>
            do that.<br>
            best,<br>
            Debbie<br>
            <span class=3D"im HOEnZb"><br>
              -----Original Message-----<br>
              From: Jim Larson [mailto:<a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                href=3D"mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]=
om</a>]<br>
              Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 11:24 AM<br>
              To: Dan Burnett; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                href=3D"mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</=
a>
              (group); Voice Public List<br>
              Subject: Re: ALL: Thoughts and thanks as the VBWG comes to
              a close REUNION?<br>
              <br>
            </span>
            <div class=3D"HOEnZb">
              <div class=3D"h5">Thanks so much for participating in one o=
f
                the most successful W3C working<br>
                groups.=C2=A0 We achieved much, had meetings at interesti=
ng
                places, and had great<br>
                times.=C2=A0 Thank you.<br>
                <br>
                Let me know if you would like to get together for a WBWG
                reunion at<br>
                SpeechTEK, May 23-25 in Washington DC, by indicating
                your availability at<br>
                one or more of these dates/times:<br>
                <br>
                Sunday evening May 22<br>
                Monday lunch May 23<br>
                Monday evening May 23<br>
                Tuesday lunch May 24<br>
                Tuesday evening May 24<br>
                Wednesday lunch May 25<br>
                Wednesday evening May 25<br>
                <br>
                -Jim<br>
                <br>
                <br>
                <br>
                On 9/26/2015 8:26 AM, Dan Burnett wrote:<br>
                &gt; To all of you who have helped in the Voice Browser
                Working Group over<br>
                &gt; the years,<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; The Voice Browser Working Group will be closing
                shortly, but before it<br>
                does, it is appropriate to say a few words about the
                history and<br>
                accomplishments of the WG.<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; The Voice Browser Working Group has been one of the
                longest-running and<br>
                most successful working groups at W3C, both in terms of
                its list of<br>
                specifications and its whole-hearted adoption by its
                target industry.<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; Under the leadership of Jim Larson, the group
                started in 1999 with a goal<br>
                of taking the VoiceXML 1.0 specification created by IBM,
                Motorola, AT&amp;T, and<br>
                Lucent and turning it into a world-wide standard for
                call center Interactive<br>
                Voice Response (IVR) application development.=C2=A0 At th=
e
                time, nearly all such<br>
                development was done using proprietary software running
                on custom hardware<br>
                systems that lived in phone company Central Office
                buildings.=C2=A0 Application<br>
                development took many months, and new features often
                took years to make<br>
                their way onto the hardware platforms.=C2=A0 Additionally=
,
                Automatic Speech<br>
                Recognition (ASR, or Voice Recognition) technology
                suffered from a lack of<br>
                adopted standards, even though many of the APIs were
                similar at their core<br>
                due to agreements in the research community.=C2=A0 This m=
ade
                it difficult for<br>
                competition in the ASR space to flourish since each ASR
                engine had a custom<br>
                API that IVR application developers had to use.=C2=A0
                Meanwhile, the HTML<br>
                revolution had already resulted in web-based customer
                self-care, so<br>
                enterprises already had a direct line between their
                customers and their back<br>
                end systems.<br>
                &gt; Enter VoiceXML.=C2=A0 Extending XML in the way W3C, =
at
                the time, was extending<br>
                HTML, via XML elements with associated rendering
                semantics, VoiceXML created<br>
                a uniform language for IVR development that allowed
                enterprises to use the<br>
                web model of resource naming, caching, and fetching for
                easy integration<br>
                with their existing back-end systems.=C2=A0 Simultaneousl=
y,
                it created a uniform<br>
                way to use ASR engines, with a common lexical grammar
                language (SRGS), a<br>
                common semantic processor language (SISR), a common
                speech synthesis<br>
                language (SSML), a common lexicon format (PLS), and the
                amazing innovation<br>
                of a confidence threshold value constrained to range
                from 0 to 100,<br>
                something considered almost impossible at the time.<br>
                &gt; Most importantly, VoiceXML introduced the web model
                to the automated call<br>
                center environment, along with its associated reductions
                in development cost<br>
                and time and deployment cost and time. Within a few
                short years<br>
                VoiceXML-based systems dominated the IVR industry,
                replacing all existing<br>
                custom hardware systems on the market with racks of
                general compute servers<br>
                as we know them today.<br>
                &gt; VoiceXML has been an unqualified success that has
                directly led to<br>
                continued innovations such as those from the cloud IVR
                industry of Twilio,<br>
                Tropo, and others.<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; During its lifetime the Voice Browser produced the
                following<br>
                specifications:<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; Recommendations:<br>
                &gt; ----------------<br>
                &gt; 2015-09-01<br>
                &gt; State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for
                Control<br>
                &gt; Abstraction <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/" rel=3D"noreferrer"
                  target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2011-07-05<br>
                &gt; Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/ccxml/" rel=3D"noreferrer"
                  target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/TR/ccxml/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2010-09-07<br>
                &gt; Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1<=
br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis11/"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/speech-synthesis11/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2008-10-14<br>
                &gt; Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version
                1.0<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/pronunciation-lexicon/"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/pronunciation-lexicon/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2007-06-19<br>
                &gt; Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 2.1<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml21/"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/voicexml21/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2007-04-05<br>
                &gt; Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition
                (SISR) Version 1.0<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/semantic-interpretation/"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/semantic-interpretation/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2004-09-07<br>
                &gt; Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.0<=
br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/speech-synthesis</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2004-03-16<br>
                &gt; Speech Recognition Grammar Specification Version
                1.0<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/speech-grammar</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2004-03-16<br>
                &gt; Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) Version
                2.0<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml20"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/voicexml20</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; Group Notes:<br>
                &gt; ------------<br>
                &gt; 2015-08-11<br>
                &gt; DOM Event I/O Processor for SCXML<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml-dom-iop/"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/scxml-dom-iop/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2015-08-11<br>
                &gt; XPath Data Model for SCXML<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml-xpath-dm/"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/scxml-xpath-dm/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2009-12-08<br>
                &gt; Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/mw4d-roadmap/"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/mw4d-roadmap/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 2005-05-26<br>
                &gt; SSML 1.0 say-as attribute values<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/ssml-sayas"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/ssml-sayas</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; 1998-01-28<br>
                &gt; Voice Browsers<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-voice"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/NOTE-voice</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; Working Drafts:<br>
                &gt; -------------<br>
                &gt; 2010-12-16<br>
                &gt; Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0<br>
                &gt; <a moz-do-not-send=3D"true"
                  href=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml30/"
                  rel=3D"noreferrer" target=3D"_blank">http://www.w3.org/=
TR/voicexml30/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; I would personally like to thank all the members of
                the Voice Browser<br>
                &gt; Working Group over the years, with special mention
                to<br>
                &gt; - Jim Barnett and his team for helping us finish
                SCXML, our final<br>
                &gt; Recommendation,<br>
                &gt; - Kaz Ashimura for his years of dedicated work as
                our Team Contact,<br>
                &gt; and<br>
                &gt; - Jim Larson and our recently departed friend,
                Scott McGlashan, for their<br>
                outstanding vision and leadership.<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; Thank you.<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; Dan Burnett<br>
                &gt; Chair, Voice Browser Working Group<br>
                &gt;<br>
                <br>
                <br>
                <br>
                <br>
                <br>
                <br>
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        <div><br>
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        -- <br>
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                                <div>Kaz Ashimura, W3C Staff Contact for
                                  Auto, WoT, TV, MMI, Voice and Geo</div>
                                <div>Tel: +81 3 3516 2504</div>
                              </div>
                            </div>
                            <div><br>
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