THIRD ANNUAL TELEPHONY VOICE USER INTERFACE CONFERENCE TO BE HELD IN SCOTTSDALE, AZ FEBRUARY 7-9, 2001

Tarzana, CA...William Meisel's third annual "Telephony Voice User Interface Conference," subtitled, "Voice Web opportunities for enterprises, entrepreneurs, and service providers," will be held on February 7-9, 2001 at the Marriott Mountain Shadows Resort and Golf Club in Scottsdale, AZ. The no-exhibits conference will bring together the world's leading managers, experts and investors in speech recognition and telephony, to explore the business opportunities created by telephone speech recognition, voice portals, and Voice Web technology. Calendar editors, please add this Conference to your Calendar.

The Principal Sponsors of this conference are Dialogic (an Intel company), Lernout & Hauspie, Locus Dialogue and Nuance Communications. IBM, iBasis, Lucent, Philips and SpeechWorks are Supporting Sponsors. The publication sponsors are Speech Recognition Update, the industry's newsletter, and Speech Technology Magazine. The extremely wide sponsorship of this conference underscores the conference's vendor-independence. Meisel says, "If you can only go to one conference on the business potential of telephone speech recognition, this is the one to attend."

Two Outstanding Keynotes...

Keynote addresses will be presented by Dr. Steve Markman, CEO of General Magic and Dr. Xuedong Huang, general manager, Microsoft Speech.NET. Dr. Markman will speak on "A new era of human interaction over the phone." Dr. Huang will discuss "Microsoft SAPI 5.0 and Beyond: Speech.NET."

Dr. Markman noted, "The explosion of the Internet combined with the proliferation of mobile phones has fuelled consumers' thirst for anywhere, anytime, anyplace access to information. A new generation is growing up with the expectation that you have instant access to friends, parents, movies, restaurants, airlines and shopping. Meeting this rapidly expanding demand for new services creates new challenges and opportunities for the designers of voice user interfaces."

Dr. Huang says, "Speech technology is going to play a very important role in Microsoft's new .NET initiative to make the web a true distributed computing platform. Microsoft's Speech.NET platform will build on Microsoft's Speech Application Program Interface and other .NET technologies to enable developers to create powerful user interfaces and services that can support multiple devices from simple telephone devices to Pocket PCs."

The Industry's Leading Forum...

The Conference is already referred to as The Industry's Leading Forum. Virtually every important company in the business will be represented this year. The conference distills the ways in which companies are saving and making money using speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, and speaker verification over the telephone.

The Conference program organizer is Dr. William Meisel, president of TMA Associates, one of the world's leading experts in speech recognition technology, a consultant to the industry, publisher and editor of Speech Recognition Update, and author of influential market studies in the field. According to Dr. Meisel, "The rapid growth of our Conference during the first two years has far exceeded our expectations. The leading figures in the industry have convened from all over the world to share their insights into implications of this improvement in the telephone's user interface."

A Unique Company Profile Day...

Although there will be no exhibits at the conference, the final day will be a unique Company Profile Day. This will allow attendees to see differences in products from different vendors in a consistent and efficient format. Short presentations by each speaker will address the company's focus, products, and distinguishing advantages. The day will begin with a panel on "Business strategies and the investment climate."

Further information about the conference can be found at www.tmaa.com or by calling 910/452-0047 or 818/708-0962.

Please direct all editorial inquiries and requests for Conference credentials to David Kaye at KPR, Inc. Phone: 818/368-8212 or E-mail: dave@kprinc.com.

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