IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
                       Boston Chapter

                 Tuesday, November 13, 2001
                Informal Discussion: 6:00 PM
                      Program: 6:30 PM

              The NameConnector Auto-Attendant

                        Mindy Garber
                    Parlance Corporation


   In 1996, a group of researchers in the Speech Recognition
group of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) decided to try to
build a commercial product around a speech recognition
toolkit they had been developing for the previous 20 years.
This team had built demos for a wide variety of applications
including command and control of cars, travel reservations,
and stock quote systems. Despite this, the group found that
customers of the toolkit were having difficulties using the
toolkit to go beyond demos and develop robust applications.
As "expert" speech application developers, the team thought
about building a very ambitious product that that would
demonstrate how to use the toolkit while advancing the state
of the art in speech technology.

   After considerable thought and discussion, the group
decided to create a very straightforward application around
the speaker-independent, constrained-grammar, continuous-
speech recognizer. The group thus designed and built the
Parlance NameConnector service, a speech-enabled
auto-attendant that allows telephone callers to connect to
the proper extension simply by saying the name of the
desired party. The group had been running a prototype of
this concept for a while at BBN and thus knew that callers
liked the system. Thus, members of the team were confident
that they could build a robust and inexpensive product
around this application. It would be easy!

   After five years of further development, it is difficult
to locate the recognizer amid all the layers of software
that now surround it -- including database software, web
software, distributed system monitoring software, dialog
management software, and data analysis software. It took a
lot of work to convert a promising technology and a
promising application idea into a solution that customers
would buy, that is, a solution that would be the foundation
for a successful small business. The decision to offer the
NameConnector exclusively as a service and not as a product
also had a profound impact on the structure of the company,
the nature of its daily work, the company's organization,
its development priorities, and the overall design of its
software systems.

   The presentation will sketch the evolution of the
software systems design and customer support infrastructure,
including a discussion of lessons learned in fielding a
"high tech" solution to non-technical users. Despite the
fact that NameConnector systems now transfer millions of
calls each month, the callers' reactions to the systems
continue to surprise the development team.


                         Biography

   In 1996, Mindy Garber helped found and is currently
working at Parlance Corp., makers of the NameConnector
Service. She is responsible for corporate processes,
support, training, field engineering, Q/A of software tools
and whatever other problems need to be solved. She
previously worked at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in the
speech recognition group supporting speech recognition tool
kits. At BBN, she also worked on data analysis software and
the Butterfly, a parallel computer. She has a Masters degree
from Stanford and a Bachelors degree from MIT. In her free
time, she studies languages and is currently working on
Arabic.


                    Meeting information

   The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society will meet on
Tuesday, 13 November 2001, at Wellesley High School at 6:00
PM for informal discussions and for the formal presentation
between 6:30 and 7:30 PM. The group will have a no-host
dinner afterwards at Bertucci's, where more conversations
can take place with the guest speaker.

   The meetings are open to the general public, and all are
welcome at the dinner afterwards. For more information
contact Mike Brenner at 781-271-3806 or at our new chapter
email address: info@robotics-boston.org. For more
information about the Boston Chapter of the Robotics and
Automation Society, visit the chapter's web site at
http://www.robotics-boston.org.


                         Directions

   From Route 128, take either Route 9 or Route 16 west.
From the junction of Routes 9 and 16, follow Route 16
(Washington Street) west past the Wellesley Hills commuter
rail station (within walking distance of the school), then
turn left onto Rice Street. Wellesley High School is on the
left. Parking is available in a lot just beyond the school.

   For a web map showing the location of Wellesley High
School, go to the MapBlast site at http://www.mapblast.com/
and enter the following information in the indicated
locations:

    Street Address:    50 Rice St
    City, State ZIP:   Wellesley, MA

Then click on the MapBlast icon. The resulting map can be
zoomed in or out by clicking in the balloon area on the
right.

   For more information about our Section and Chapter, visit
our web site at our new registered domain URL

             http://www.robotics-boston.org/

or send email to info@robotics-boston.org