The growth of Conversations Mobile
Last year was the first time we introduced the concept of "Conversations Mobile" at Conversations. Considered a conference within a conference, it had its own audience, set of speakers, and a single session track run concurrently with the four tracks of breakout sessions.
This year Conversations Mobile is alive and well, expanding to two full tracks. But boy, things have certainly changed, haven't they? Nowadays, ask any Nuance exec what our business is focused on and they'll probably say it's three things: speech, mobile, and healthcare. With the recent acquisition announcements of VoiceSignal and Tegic, Nuance's mobile business is growing faster than the AT&T temp workforce. Both of these acquisitions are expected to close before Conversations this year (though we still continue to operate as almost completely separate companies until the deals close.) The word around here is that we expect to be on 1 billion mobile devices... within about 18 months. So I'm thinking that there might be a few more things to talk about this year!
Nuance is certainly outgrowing its previous position as "the leader in speech." I think a few years ago, you would have heard us asking customers, "We've gots lots of great speech technology, whaddya need us to build for you?" Nowadays, the question is not "how can you use our speech" -- it's "how can we make life easier for your customers?" That translates into the mobile world as well... speech is a great interface for mobile phones, but it shouldn't be the ONLY interface. By bringing together all these different elements of input methods, we can make it easier for users to interact with their mobile devices and get easier access to all the cool content out there -- you know, the stuff that the mobile carriers want to sell to their customers, but can't because it takes drilling down through 7 menus to download a ring tone...
We'll be revealing more of the Conversations Mobile agenda as time goes on... and we're still accepting nominations via our Call For Speakers program for all tracks, including both Mobile Business and Mobile Technologies.
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