Speech technology has made lots of progress in recent years. For instance,  automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems of good quality are now  available for Dutch, e.g., via Google. Importantly, recently, an open  source ASR for Dutch, based on Kaldi, is made available for companies and  the academia. The availability of speech technology for Dutch has led many  companies and government agencies to develop tools and applications that  use speech-based input. However, the Dutch speech technology landscape is  fragmented. Small groups of people are working on similar ideas and face  similar problems as others without knowing about it and knowing one  another. For instance, due to privacy restrictions, it is not always  possible to send speech to the Google speech recognition system, but  rather the speech needs to stay in-house and the ASR systems need to be  run and maintained in-house as well. How best to do that? At the same time, many of our long-term goals overlap.

The Dutch Speech Tech Day aims to build a community of researchers and  users of speech technology in all its forms in the Netherlands. We want to  give students the opportunities to talk to companies, researchers, and  governmental agencies about jobs/internships. We want to provide a  platform for researchers, companies and governmental agencies to learn about the newest research, learn about each other's needs and wishes, and  allow for the building of networks for collaborative research or project  proposals. Although the focus will be on speech technology for Dutch,  there will be ample space to present work on speech technology on other languages. The Dutch Speech Tech Day is for all people interested in and  working on speech technology, irrespective the language.

In short, the Dutch Speech Tech Day will be an excellent opportunity to  learn about the newest insights on speech tech from academia, to hear about what companies and governmental organisations are working on, to network, etc.

Programme

• Invited talks by people from industry, academia, and governmental organisations
• Poster session
• Panel discussion on the future of Dutch speech technology: The panel discussion will focus on e.g., what are the problems companies face, what wishes do they have, where should the focus be on developing new speech  technology for Dutch, how can we obtain funding for the further development of speech technology for Dutch for academics.
• Networking & Drinks