Ria Farrell Schalnat provides a general overview of the steps necessary in securing speech-technology-related patents. She also shares common pitfalls, tools for dealing with speech patents, and pending and resolved litigations in speech.

A "mashup" is the combination of two or more services, typically through lightweight application programming interfaces (APIs). How can you create voice or speech-driven mashups that access various online services? What platforms are out there to help create voice/speech mashups? What web services can you include in a mashup? How can you combine voice with chat, SMS, mobile web, and more to deliver information to your callers in new and interesting ways?

How do speaker biometrics work? Is speaker biometrics reliable? Can a tape recorder fool a speaker verification system? Can a professional mimic fool these systems? How do speaker biometrics compare with other biometrics? Where is speaker biometrics being used and why? Bring your own questions and answers and participate in what is expected to be an informative and intriguing discussion.

Come and discuss why organizations hire consultants rather than outsource an activity or assign the activity in-house, as well as different types of consultants, what a consultant can do for your organization, consulting fees, and how to pick the best match for your organization. What is an independent consultant, and what does he bring to the table? Where do you look for a consultant that matches your goals?

This interactive discussion focuses on today’s voice biometrics use cases. The group explores the benefits and best practices of various usage scenarios. This includes frequently asked questions surrounding established deployment and usage of voice biometrics within an organization.

Mobile phones are far more pervasive in the developing world than traditiona computers, making voice-based services a natural choice for applications in these countries. However, creation of locally relevant voice applications is impeded in many places by a lack of knowledge and technology. Life-critica information and services are in limited supply, especially for those who need help the most. What should be done to bring voice technology to developing nations and assist them in using the technology wisely?

The creation of multimodal user interfaces, blending GUI and VUI, presents unique challenges. Graphical and voice interaction designers have a wide experience in crafting user interfaces in their respective areas, but relatively little work has been done combining the two. What guidelines and heuristics from VUI design carry over to designing multimodal user interfaces? And what VUI guidelines don’t transfer well to multimodal user interfaces? What GUI and multimodal user interface (MUI) guidelines should voice designers be aware of? Join this discussion about new frontiers in the design of devices and applications.

When explaining to people that you design user interfaces for voice applications for phones, they usually respond with, “Oh, I hate them” and list a series of complaints. How would you respond to these comments? What can be done to help people have a more positive expectation for speech self-service?

Working with a customer who is excited about the design process can be an asset to an IVR project, but not all customers have the caller experience as their first priority. How can the VUI designer guide the customer toward the best design choices for both their business and their callers? This discussion covers how to create a balance between business needs and caller needs.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a service company host your speech application verses maintaining the application on your own server? What are advantages and disadvantages of various hosting strategies? How do you choose a hosting service?

It is difficult to author a speech application that runs on Google’s Android Apple’s iOS, Microsoft’s Windows Phone, and other smartphone operating systems. Should standards be developed to minimize this effort, or do stan dards stifle creativity? What standards are necessary to enable application developers to author once and deploy on multiple device types?

There are many ways to write a script within the VUI design. This discussion focuses on the pros and cons of designing an IVR in the first person: the benefits, potential negative consequences, cost, and customer satisfaction.