Open Dialog: Activities of the VoiceXML Forum and W3C

By Gerald M. Karam

With the launch of the VoiceXML Forum in March of 1999, and the release of the VoiceXML 1.0 specification in March 2000, there has been a surge of activity in the speech and telephony industry around the VoiceXML concept, products and services. In conjunction with these events, the VoiceXML community has been progressing the language further and improving the business environment in which VoiceXML exists. Most notableare the efforts of the VoiceXML Forum and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Voice Browser Working Group (VBWG).

Figure 1 below provides a brief history lesson in how all the participants work together.

Figure 1: Timeline of Speech and Telephony Activities

The VoiceXML Forum's process to develop a language was initiated by AT&T, Lucent, and Motorola in mid-1998. The result of this collaboration was a contribution to a W3C-sponsored workshop on Voice Browsers in November 1998. As a result of this meeting and discussions among the three companies, a decision was made to create the VoiceXML Forum to accelerate the definition of a common markup language for telephony and speech applications and hopefully bootstrap the industry. Three key events--the announcement of the Forum in March 1999, the addition of IBM as one of the founders, and the creation of a draft specification, VoiceXML 0.9 in August 1999--generated important momentum in the speech and telephony industry. In this same time frame, in late March 1999, the W3C formed the Voice Browser Working Group (VBWG) to explore the full range of markup languages, including speech grammars, speech synthesis, natural language, and, of course, speech dialogs--the core of VoiceXML. The W3C created requirements for these interrelated languages, and began work on defining them, in many cases leveraging upon work that had been undertaken by other organizations or companies. The W3C VBWG monitored the VoiceXML Forum activities, to see if the VoiceXML effort could be harnessed for the W3C speech dialog work.

The VoiceXML Forum accepted public and membership comment on the VoiceXML 0.9 specification, and worked through late 1999 and early 2000 to produce the final release: VoiceXML 1.0 on 7 March 2000. The full release from the Forum again sparked momentum in the marketplace. After releasing the specification, the VoiceXML Forum decided to begin the process of submitting it to the W3C for the dialog language effort in the VBWG. This step was officially completed in May 2000, when the W3C acknowledged the submission and the VBWG adopted it as the basis for its dialog markup language.

In May 2000, the VoiceXML Forum decided to reorganize in several ways:

1. To expand the range of Forum activities (language definition had been the chief task until that time)
2. To open up greater opportunities for participation of Forum members
3. Concentrate on nurturing the industry and raising awareness while the language work had time to become adopted,
4. Engage the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (ISTO) to provide day-to-day management of the Forum.

Thus by September 2000, VoiceXML Forum launched a new membership structure and began new committees for Marketing, Conformance and Education. The new membership structure introduced three membership levels:

• Sponsor: Held by the Forum's four founding companies, and providing the primary operational funding for the Forum;
• Promoter: A paid annual membership level;
• Supporter: A free membership level.

Status as Promoters or Sponsors enabled member companies to participate in or chair committee work. This provided for a much greater opportunity for involvement and more volunteer resources upon which to draw. For example, VoiceXML Review is a tangible output of this restructuring.

Continued...

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