Blade Kotelly

Chief Designer,Endeca Technologies. Formerly Chief Voice User Interface Designer, and Director of the Edify Design Collaborative, Worldwide

Blade Kotelly has been a leading industry expert for the past 12 years and holds a degree in Human-Factors from Tufts University. Blade truly understands the nature, design, development and use of speech applications as strategic business imperative and a branding opportunity from the perspective of an experienced, business-focused practitioner. Among the diverse applications he's worked on, perhaps the most influential design is the flight information system developed for United Airlines. Julie Vallone wrote in "Investor's Business Daily", "By the end of the conversation, you might want to take the voice to dinner."

As the Author of "The Art and Business of Speech Recognition", Blade examines both the rapid emergence and broad potential of speech recognition applications. He takes the mystery out of speech and provides managers with real examples of how speech recognition applications will reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, enhance company brands and grow revenues. The examples used are all attainable today and have been implemented by Mr. Kotelly. For the designer, he ensures that user interface design principals and techniques needed to develop and deploy successful applications are clearly spelled out.

In addition to United Airlines, he has worked on applications for Apple Computer, E*Trade, McKesson, Fidelity Investments IBG, Fed Ex and many others. A frequent conference speaker and university lecturer, Blade has had his work and ideas featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TechTV, the BBC and National Public Radio.

Chris Roby

User Interface Designer/Engineer, Technical Consultant for Endeca Technologies

Chris Roby started learning about Speech Recognition interface design when he took the class 5 years ago. Since then, he has produced a variety of designs for an industry-leading alternative medicine practice, Ferguson Enterprises, and proof-of-concepts at Fidelity Investments’ Advanced Technologies Group using cutting edge user interface technologies. In addition to teaching this class and working at Endeca with Blade, Chris is working on web applications for the iPhone and creating a 3' x 2' multi-touch interface. Chris holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Tufts University.