SpeechTEK411 – The Multi-Channel Demo

UPDATE: We have noticed delays in responses to Twitter inquiries and upon investigation it appears to unfortunately be ongoing service issues with Twitter itself.

Want to get the scoop on what is happening at SpeechTEK 2009 in New York City this week? Would you like to know when a certain speaker is talking? Or where a session is taking place? Would you like to know what sessions a particular company is participating in? Would you like to search the SpeechTEK schedule for sessions based on a keyword?

Now you can … by calling a number, sending a SMS or Twitter message, browsing a web site from your mobile phone or iPhone, or interacting via instant messaging. Just use any one of these methods:

  • Voice: Call 1-347-637-8900.
  • Voice via Skype: Call +990009369991435083.
  • SMS: Text “help” to 82422 to get started. (NOTE: Works only in North America.)
  • Twitter: Tweet “@speechtek411 help” to start.
  • Mobile web: Visit http://bit.ly/stek411 on your mobile phone.

You also can interact with SpeechTEK411 using your favorite IM service. Just add one of the usernames below as a contact and send the message “help” to get started:

  • Yahoo IM: SpeechTEK411
  • MSN/Windows Live Messenger: SpeechTEK411@live.com
  • AIM: SpeechTEK411
  • Skype:: SpeechTEK411
  • Jabber/GTalk:: SpeechTEK411@bot.im
NOTE: This application is NOT directly affiliated with the SpeechTEK conference or with SpeechTEK Media and the accuracy of the schedule information cannot be 100% guaranteed.

HOW TO USE THE APPLICATION

As noted above, you can simply send the word “help” to get started. You can also search by:

  • speaker name: Try, for instance, “auburn” or “york” to see when our sessions are.
  • company: Send a company name and receive info on all the sessions in which they are participating.
  • time: Want to know what’s coming up at a particular time? Just send in a string like “now”, “at 2 pm”, “tomorrow 10 am”, or “Wed 13:30″. Particularly powerful, to me, is sending “next”.
  • session code: If you know the “session code” for a specific session, you can send that in. For instance, “D106″ or “SD103″.
  • keyword: You can send a keyword like “security” and the app will reply back with sessions relating to that keyword. (NOTE: The keyword search mode is only available using the interactive menus – see special commands below.)

There are also a couple of special commands you can send:

  • rooms: returns a list of the rooms used for each track
  • menu: enters an interactive menu-driven mode
  • help: provides text to help the user

How We Built The App – The Technology Behind It

The beautiful thing about this demo application is that it is simply ONE application built in VoiceObjects and then made accessible through multiple communication channels. At a high-level, the interaction looks like this:

speechtek411design-1.jpg

The calls and messages hit our hosted/cloud platform and then interact with a server running our VoiceObjects software where the application is hosted. Users of the mobile web interface are actually connecting directly to that VoiceObjects server.

Getting the schedule was actually the most difficult part, as there was no way to programmatically access the data on the SpeechTEK web site. We wound up simply scraping the data from the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday pages and then checking back in occasionally to sync our local copy to the posted copy. The SpeechTEK staff subsequently informed us that they are NOT able to guarantee the accuracy of the content on the web site, and so we are unfortunately at the mercy of their updates.

From a VoiceObjects point-of-view, the application uses a single service definition and then exposes that to the multiple channels (click the image for a larger view):

SpeechTEK411servicedef.jpg

Of course, when you are designing a multi-channel application, the responses may need to be tweaked a bit for each channel. For that reason, VoiceObjects allows you to modify actions based on the channel (click image for larger view):

SpeechTEK411-channelspecific.jpg

In our case this was particularly necessary because two of the channels, SMS and Twitter, have size limitations with regard to what you can send.

The power of the implementation lies in the fact that from a developer point-of-view, it’s only a single application. Changes that are made to the application to, for instance, add new features, are then immediately available across all the channels.

Get Started Building Multi-Channel Apps!

This demonstration used existing Voxeo products and services. You can create a free developer application in our Evolution Developer Portal or IMified service and start building applications there. If you would like to use VoiceObjects to build your app, you can download a free copy of VoiceObjects. We’ll have more notes and tutorials up about this… particularly after an announcement tomorrow (August 25th). Stay tuned…

Acknowledgements

We conceived this application about a month ago and Dr. Andreas Volmer needs to be acknowledged for the great amount of work he did to bring the idea into reality.

We also thank the folks at SpeechTEK Media for letting us use the “SpeechTEK” brand name in the application.