tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40292213903400362042024-03-16T19:53:11.943+01:00LT-Innovate - The Association of the Language Technology IndustryWilliam Bressandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123830622131169270noreply@blogger.comBlogger281125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-27041881607266689102016-07-14T13:48:00.003+02:002016-07-14T17:19:03.155+02:00Is Multilingualism a Joke ? <br />
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That the Brits develop some sort of black humour when it comes to BREXIT and its consequences, is somehow understandable. That every nonsense talk is then published by renown newspapers such as The Guardian is another issue.<br />
In Brussels, apparently, there is a joke going around regarding the soon-to-be new UK Commissioner, as could be read in today's <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/14/britains-meps-ushered-quietly-off-stage-as-the-eu-show-goes-on">The Guardian</a>: "EU officials have stressed that the next British commissioner cannot
expect a post as influential as the one Hill has given up. The Brussels
beltway joke is that the British commissioner should be put in charge of
multilingualism – a job created in 2007 for Romania when it joined the
EU halfway through the European commission".<br />
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Multilingualism is a crucial cultural patrimony of Europe and an important topic at all levels, be it economic, social or cultural. The period of the multilingual Commissioner showed that languages, language technologies and multilingualism figured high on several agendas - but were sooner or later dropped as soon as the short shelf-life of the post came to an end.<br />
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Now, since 14 days exactly, the term "multilingualism" appears again in the title of a unit at DG CONNECT (Unit G3): "Learning, Multilingualism & Accessibility" that gives its description as: "The mission of the unit is to make the Digital Single Market more
accessible, secure and inclusive. To this end, the unit supports policy,
research, innovation and deployment of learning technologies and <i>key
enabling digital language technologies and services to allow all
European consumers and businesses to fully benefit from the Digital
Single Market</i>." (emphasis added).<br />
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The importance of languages for the Digital Single Market is slowly getting recognized (at least in speeches by Vice-President A. Ansip and Commissioner Oettinger). Therefore, I do not find the idea of a Commissioner for Multilingualism that bad, and surely not a "joke". Actually, somehow I would like the idea that an English native speaker becomes the Commissioner for Multilingualism. If only to see the French reaction to that "joke"...mmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00060027977214601987noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-10551697251058864382016-04-14T15:11:00.000+02:002016-04-14T15:17:56.108+02:00The Future of Language Resources for Machine Translation (LR4MT)<div style="text-align: justify;">
In a recent brief survey of language service suppliers (LSPs), LT-Innovate attempted to find out from the translation industry how they saw the future of language data availability specifically for machine translation. The results provide food for thought when it comes to planning for the improved usability of digital text resources in the years ahead. It looks as if new developments in machine translation (MT) technology will work in parallel with a growing need for the right data.<br />
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First, statistical machine translation is clearly on most LSPs’ radar screens. Hard data on the actual size of the user market for MT systems is impossible to calculate today, as is information on who uses which free or paying services available online in their everyday work. But everyone who responded to our survey claims they will be “using” MT in the next 2 to 3 years. </div>
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Preparing for this transition is therefore vital for the nascent language data resource sector.</div>
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Overall, 30% of our LSP respondents reckon that the data they will need to prime their MT engines will come from their clients, 78% will use their in-house translation memories and similar, and 70% will try to find third party sources from outside their immediate business nexus. <br />
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15% of them would be prepared to buy such data, 70% of them will crawl the web, while a total of 83% of them expect more free resources will become available.</div>
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Judging by our <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.org/lt-observe/resources-list" target="_blank">current findings</a> from mapping publicly-available LR4MT in Europe, the chances of them finding the relevant resources easily look relatively small. Sharing language data is not a high-visibility phenomenon so far.<br />
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However 39% said they did not have the necessary engineering resources in-house to transform the content they might find into viable MT data. This suggests there could be a small market for language data cleaning and aligning for data harvested from the web or well-known repositories.</div>
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When it comes to the desired quality criteria for usable language resources, by far the most important criterion (84%) was unsurprisingly domain relevance. Indeed, small customer- or domain-specific language models for MT are typically considered to outperform general models by a very large factor. This suggests that some serious effort will need to go into pinpointing domain relevance in any language resource supply platform, rather than rely, say, on volume as a virtue in itself.</div>
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Appropriately, there was also considerable emphasis on leveraging the semantic characteristics of language data needed for MT. Semantically enriched data, as proposed by such EC-funded projects as <a href="http://www.lider-project.eu/" target="_blank">LIDER</a> (a Linked Open Data-based ecosystem of free, interlinked, and semantically interoperable language resources) and <a href="http://babelnet.org/" target="_blank">BabelNet</a> (multilingual dictionary underpinned by a rich semantic network) clearly have potential as a future resource. We therefore need to examine the fastest and most efficient way to transform this potential technology stack into an operational reality. We can also expect to hear much more from <a href="http://www.multilingualknowledge.com/" target="_blank">Coreon</a> about multilingual knowledge management as a fundamental business tool.<br />
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So what can we expect for a more effective and efficient deployment of LR4MT? In general, respondents are looking towards new hybrid models of machine translation involving the integration of transfer/grammar and semantic modules into the plain vanilla statistical model as it exists today. This suggests that language technology and data resource quality will need to evolve closely in parallel. <br />
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They also expect deep learning to be applied to MT, together with such processes as continuous retraining during the MT post-editing phase. In other words, we are just at the beginning of a new cycle of more artificial intelligence-driven MT systems that will be able to learn as they go and leverage even more usability from relevant data resources. But as one respondent pointed out, the ultimate litmus test for the value of translation resource data is whether or not the original translation is any good. Tools to tame the elusive beast of rapid translation quality evaluation will still need to be part of the mix.<br />
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What specific needs for or constraints on MT data resources do you foresee in Europe in the near future? Tell us here or <a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/69LB8P5" target="_blank">respond to our survey</a>.</div>
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<b>Jo Céline</b>LT Innovatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02108045926206071723noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-89747726325513937522016-02-25T17:29:00.000+01:002016-04-14T15:01:41.067+02:00ESIF Funding Opportunities<br />
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We know it all: There are these perfectly innovative ideas, a dream-team available and willing to cooperate, but, alas, no money. It is for language technologies the same as for other topics - no, it is a bit worse, as there is no dedicated budget in H2020 for LT only. Hence, it was time to look for other money sources. LT-Observatory, a project funded by H2020 (yes :-) looked into alternative opportunities and started with ESIF. This lesser known acronym stands for European Structural and Investment Funds, funds distributed by the EC but administered by national/regional authorities. For those that want to know more about ESIF, click <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.org/lt-observe/how-does-esif-work">here</a>.</div>
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Member States and/or regions identify priorities, so-called "Research & Innovation Smart Specialisation Strategies" or RIS 3. Other priorities include SME competitiveness. While no priority mentions directly language technologies, many see a window of opportunity for LT projects within their priorities. The Member States' and regions' information can be found at the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.org/lt-observe/public-policy-observatory/national-funding-opportunities">National Funding Opportunities web page</a>. Or you can download a <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.org/sites/default/files/InfoGuide_ESIF_Funding_Opportunities_2016_web.pdf">pdf document</a>.</div>
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Our tip: Visit the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.org/lt-observe/public-policy-observatory/national-funding-opportunities">website</a> in the coming months, we will add more national and regional funding opportunities. If you try it out and are successful, let us know so that we can feature your "success story" on-line. </div>
mmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00060027977214601987noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-23708763607706714222015-11-20T15:42:00.001+01:002016-04-14T14:57:10.715+02:00The European Language Cloud, or How to Enable Multilingual Europe<div style="text-align: justify;">
Multilingualism is a core value of the European Union, as integral to Europe as the freedom of movement, the freedom of residence, and the freedom of expression. The European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which enshrines the foundational rights and freedoms protected in the EU, upholds a respect for cultural, religious, and also linguistic diversity as a cornerstone of European policy. <br /><br /><a href="http://ec.europa.eu/languages/policy/linguistic-diversity/index_en.htm" target="_blank">Europe’s commitment to linguistic diversity</a> is most clearly apparent in its unwavering decision to maintain 24 official languages in the EU – no matter how large or small their speaker populations, and despite the bureaucratic hurdles in Brussels and Luxembourg – though many more regional languages are widely spoken and officially promoted across the continent. <br /><br /><b>Language barriers in the digital world </b><br /><br />Though Europe’s multilingualism is a fundamental cultural and social value, its treasured linguistic diversity can also lead to significant communication barriers between people. The upholding of “unity in diversity” remains a difficult challenge. The effects of linguistic fragmentation can be seen most clearly in <a href="http://www.thewire.com/global/2011/11/worlds-languages-according-twitter/44690/" target="_blank">maps of language use on social media sites</a> such as Twitter, where conversations are mostly restricted to national languages and thus limited by geographic borders. <br /><br />As these fascinating maps make all too clear, language barriers can hinder the free flow of information and knowledge between nations, effectively fragmenting Europe into “language silos.” This is a major obstacle for the receiving and imparting of information and ideas across national borders – a defining aspect of the freedom of expression. <br /><br />Language barriers also represent a major obstacle to the creation of the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/digital-single-market/" target="_blank">Digital Single Market</a>, which seeks to combine the 28 national digital markets, harmonizing regulations and uniting all 500 million citizens of the EU in a single online marketplace. <br /><br />At the moment, as a <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_313_en.pdf" target="_blank">Eurobarometer study shows</a>, more than 40% of Europeans never purchase goods or services if they are not available in their native language. Language barriers therefore severely restrict access to goods for European consumers, hindering the creation of a Digital Single Market. Having more access to information in multiple languages would go a long way toward increasing the number of cross-border sales. At the moment, <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/digital-single-market/docs/dsm-factsheet_en.pdf" target="_blank">according to the European Commission</a>, only 15% of European consumers shop online in other EU countries, and only 7% of European SMEs sell cross-border. There is much room for growth. <br /><br /><b>How language technologies can help </b><br /><br />Fortunately, there is a technological solution to easing linguistic fragmentation online. Recent developments in language technologies, such as state-of-the-art machine translation and automated speech recognition, now enable us to overcome language barriers between people, simultaneously allowing multilingualism to thrive in the digital world. <br /><br />Thanks to language technologies, people are enabled to write, read, or speak online in their own native language, while others can access the information in a language that they understand. <br /><br />The heightened application of these language technologies to the online market will not only foster communication between nations. It will also help boost the European economy by enabling more cross-border trade. <br /><br />Just imagine: a digital market where absolutely all online content is instantly available in all languages of the European Union; where Internet users can interact seamlessly in real time with one another regardless of the language they are speaking or writing; and where goods and information can be searched for and accessed no matter where it was posted or in which language. <br /><br /><b>European Language Cloud</b> <br /><br />Where to begin to realize this vision? Fortunately, European excellence in language technology research and the thriving <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.org/" target="_blank">language technology industry</a> has already laid the foundations for a viable solution. This includes recent breakthroughs in services from fields such as natural language processing, machine translation, text analytics, speech recognition, multilingual SEO/SEM, and semantic analysis. <br /><br />But none of these services alone can meet the comprehensive needs of European industry and enable a truly multilingual Digital Single Market. To meet the complex needs of the market, language technology services must be accessed, combined, and leveraged into large-scale solutions, which can then be plugged directly into applications, making them fully multilingual. <br /><br />This is where European policymakers can step in and help, by setting up a public language technology infrastructure – the European Language Cloud. This infrastructure would use the power of cloud technologies and combine the best that European industry and research have to offer. <br /><br />A European Language Cloud would ensure easy access to key enabling language technologies for all EU languages, in the areas of natural language processing, automated translation, speech processing, and semantic analysis, among others. This would make these enabling services easily available to developers and integrators of commercial and public digital solutions. <br /><br />The infrastructure should also include open access to multilingual language resources – the raw material for data-driven technologies and solutions – which all too often remain buried deep in corporate and government databases, instead of being used to build the solutions sorely needed by the marketplace.<br /><br />Once a solid European Language Cloud infrastructure is in place, commercial players and public sector organizations could then use the available language technology services as buildings blocks, or core components, to create innovative multilingual solutions for their high-demand applications. <br /><br /><b>The role of European research and innovation </b><br /><br />At the same time, the European Language Cloud must be continuously replenished with new services and innovations. The driver of this innovation is the cutting-edge <a href="http://www.meta-net.eu/" target="_blank">language technology research</a> emerging from Europe’s universities and research centers. However, several “knowledge gaps” still exist in research, and often our research doesn’t fully evolve into commercially viable applications. <br /><br />Targeted actions are critically needed to address the gaps in coverage for all EU languages, and provide novel methods to improve quality and applicability of language technologies. In a tangible display of its respect for linguistic diversity, Europe must fill the gaps in existing knowledge and ensure that all EU languages (not just larger languages) have the same degree and quality of language technology services. <br /><br />Europe must also guarantee that European excellence in research keeps up with the growing demands of global industry. This will help Europe to remain globally competitive with next-generation services and solutions. <br /><br /><b>What Europe can do to implement this vision </b><br /><br />How to implement this vision? The European Commission already has the right instruments in place – an encouraging sign. The <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/connecting-europe-facility" target="_blank">Connecting Europe Facility</a> programme is taking the initial steps to create an automated translation infrastructure for Europe. Public institutions across Europe have already begun to reap the first fruits of this programme, as it extends and improves its translation technologies for European languages. But the CEF programme should be significantly expanded to include other essential language technologies as well. <br /><br />Europe must also reinforce its innovative language technology research, through programmes like <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/" target="_blank">Horizon 2020</a> and other instruments. Unfortunately, language technologies are missing from the latest Work Programme for 2016-17. Not only should they return to the Work Programme for 2018-19, but they should also assume a central priority to address this major challenge for Europe. <br /><br />Breaking the language barrier in Europe is essential to make the EU more united in its diversity. It is crucial for not only increasing trade and commerce, but also fostering communication and understanding between the 500 million citizens of multilingual Europe. This is needed today more than ever. We should not miss this opportunity. <br /><br /><b>Andrejs Vasiļjevs and Rihards Kalniņš, <a href="http://www.tilde.com/" target="_blank">Tilde</a></b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06574921634254800998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-39500449624231977492015-07-13T17:06:00.003+02:002015-07-13T17:15:27.779+02:00Le traitement automatique des langues (enfin) à l’honneur<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<i>Confrontée à un volume d’information toujours croissant, l’Europe
découvre, ravie, la valeur du traitement automatique des langues, ciment
de la construction européenne.</i></div>
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Lors du récent <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/">sommet LT-Innovate</a>, Alexander
De Croo, vice premier ministre de Belgique et ministre de l’Economie
digitale ainsi que Robert Madelin,
directeur général de la DG CONNECT à la Commission européenne, ont
envoyé un message très clair à la communauté du Traitement Automatique
des Langues (TAL) : « Nous comprenons aujourd’hui l’importance de votre
discipline et le rôle qu’elle joue dans le développement économique de
l’Europe. Nous apprécions aussi votre capacité à transformer et adapter
votre discours à nos préoccupations économique et politique ».</div>
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Ce message, illustré dans les interventions régulières des
intervenants politiques, souligne la prise de conscience du rôle
fondamental du traitement automatique des langues.</div>
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Cette « compréhension déclarée » serait ainsi liée à la
transformation du discours de notre discipline envers les autorités. Je
n’en suis pas aussi convaincu que cela. Je n’ai pas le sentiment que
notre discours ai subitement ou progressivement changé fondamentalement,
et ce quelle que soit la discipline concernée, la traduction, la
reconnaissance vocale ou encore l’analyse sémantique.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Cette soudaine prise de conscience des autorités européenne me semble
être davantage une conséquence de leur difficulté, voire de leur
impossibilité à faire face au volume d’information qui les submerge
aujourd’hui.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
En ce sens, nous pouvons rappeler à la communauté et aux autorités,
que l’un des 3 V du Big Data – la Variété - caractérise intrinsèquement
la masse des données qu’il faut appréhender et traiter.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
C’est bien cet enfant de l’ère numérique qui a éveillé les
consciences sur l’importance des données, leur nature, leur diversité,
leur masse, pour l’aide à la décision technique, économique et
politique.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Cependant, quelles qu’en soient les raisons, cette prise de
conscience, dans le contexte du « Digital Agenda for Europe » est une
excellente nouvelle pour notre communauté. Celle-ci, rappelons-le, est
composée à la fois d’universitaires, mais également d’un grand nombre de
PME à travers toute l’Europe. Il apparaît donc aujourd’hui que nous
sommes clairement identifiés et reconnus pour nos expertises variées et
notre valeur contributive au développement et aux enjeux européens.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Nous le savons, et j’ai pu le vérifier lors de notre réunion
annuelle, toutes les entreprises engagées de notre communauté
connaissent bien la manière dont elles peuvent contribuer à ce
développement stratégique. En revanche, trop nombreuses sont celles qui
finissent par baisser les bras au moment de se confronter aux mécanismes
administratifs complexes et statutaires de l’Europe. Nous sommes en
général des entreprises de petite taille et malheureusement pas toujours
correctement équipées pour échanger d’égal à égal avec les autorités
Européennes à l’occasion de projets de type H2020 ou autre. Nous avons
parfois le sentiment regrettable qu’au cours des 15 dernières années, le
fossé entre nous continue inexorablement de se creuser, qu’une
communication simple et directe reste toujours difficile et qu’au final,
l’Europe ne sait pas nous accompagner.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Il est urgent et impératif que l’Europe assume et entretienne un rôle
d’accompagnement stratégique – à l’instar des États-Unis – auprès de
nos PME innovantes, de nos start-up, parfois fragiles, afin d’assurer
des perspectives de développement pérenne à moyen et long terme.
L’Europe doit comprendre l’importance stratégique des technologies
innovantes que nous développons pour servir, entre autre, l’indépendance
technologique, économique, culturelle et juridique de notre continent
européen.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Il est heureux que nos représentants européens prennent conscience de
notre existence technologique et de notre valeur associée. Il est temps
maintenant que notre Europe administrative se mette à notre hauteur
afin de nous apporter une aide active en nous impliquant dans des
projets d’exécution et de production. L’un des premiers bénéfices
attendus permettrait certainement de simplifier et d’optimiser ses
propres rouages administratifs...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i><b>Charles Huot</b> est le directeur général délégué et co-fondateur de <a href="http://www.temis.com/home">TEMIS</a>,
une société de gestion des données non structurées. <b>TEMIS</b> aide les
entreprises à archiver, gérer, analyser, trouver et partager un volume
d’informations toujours croissant. Cet article a été publié aussi sur <a href="http://www.euractiv.fr/sections/innovation-entreprises/le-traitement-automatique-des-langues-enfin-lhonneur-316207" target="_blank">EurActiv</a>.</i> </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06574921634254800998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-4524235592464789882015-07-13T13:38:00.002+02:002016-02-25T18:18:40.222+01:00The LT-Innovate Summit 2015 in a NutshellThe <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu//lti-summit" target="_blank">LT-Innovate Summit 2015</a> was attended by more than 140 stakeholders from industry, research, consultancy and policy making. Below are its highlights.<br />
<br />
<h3>
LT-Innovate Award Winners 2015</h3>
<br />
Five Winners of the LT-Innovate Award 2015 were selected by the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/jury" target="_blank">jury</a> &
participants from the 17 <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/applicants" target="_blank">applicants</a> who showcased themselves during the
Summit: <br />
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
<b>The 5 Winners of the LT-Innovate Award 2015 were designated at the LT-Innovate Summit on 25 June:</b><br />
<a href="http://digm.io/" target="_blank">digm</a><br />
<a href="http://www.dolphio.hu/hu/" target="_blank">Dolphio Technologies</a><br />
<a href="http://www.interprefy.com/" target="_blank">Interprefy</a><br />
<a href="https://www.recapp.ch/en/" target="_blank">recapp IT</a><br />
<a href="http://www.speexx.com/en/" target="_blank">Speexx</a><br />
The Winners were selected by the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/jury">jury</a> & participants from the 17 <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/applicants">applicants</a> who showcased themselves during the Summit.<br />
See more information on our main LTI Award <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/award">page</a>.<br />
- See more at: http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/award-2015#sthash.ngYjBzd8.dpuf<br />
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
<b>The 5 Winners of the LT-Innovate Award 2015 were designated at the LT-Innovate Summit on 25 June:</b><br />
<a href="http://digm.io/" target="_blank">digm</a><br />
<a href="http://www.dolphio.hu/hu/" target="_blank">Dolphio Technologies</a><br />
<a href="http://www.interprefy.com/" target="_blank">Interprefy</a><br />
<a href="https://www.recapp.ch/en/" target="_blank">recapp IT</a><br />
<a href="http://www.speexx.com/en/" target="_blank">Speexx</a><br />
The Winners were selected by the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/jury">jury</a> & participants from the 17 <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/applicants">applicants</a> who showcased themselves during the Summit.<br />
See more information on our main LTI Award <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/award">page</a>.<br />
- See more at: http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/award-2015#sthash.ngYjBzd8.dpufthe LT-Innovate Award 2015 were designated at the LT-Innovate Summit on 25 June:<br />
<br />
digm<br />
Dolphio Technologies<br />
Interprefy<br />
recapp IT<br />
Speexx<br />
<br />
The Winners were selected by the jury & participants from the 17 applicants who showcased themselves during the Summit.<br />
<br />
See more information on our main LTI Award page.Five Winners of the LT-Innovate Award 2015 were selected by the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/jury" target="_blank">jury</a> &
participants from the 17 <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/applicants" target="_blank">applicants</a> who showcased themselves during the
Summit:</div>
</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://digm.io/" target="_blank">digm</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.dolphio.hu/hu/" target="_blank">Dolphio Technologies</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.interprefy.com/" target="_blank">Interprefy</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.recapp.ch/en/" target="_blank">recapp IT</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.speexx.com/en/" target="_blank">Speexx</a></li>
</ul>
For more information, see main LTI Award <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/award" target="_blank">page</a>.<br />
<br />
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
<b>The 5 Winners of the LT-Innovate Award 2015 were designated at the LT-Innovate Summit on 25 June:</b><br />
<a href="http://digm.io/" target="_blank">digm</a><br />
<a href="http://www.dolphio.hu/hu/" target="_blank">Dolphio Technologies</a><br />
<a href="http://www.interprefy.com/" target="_blank">Interprefy</a><br />
<a href="https://www.recapp.ch/en/" target="_blank">recapp IT</a><br />
<a href="http://www.speexx.com/en/" target="_blank">Speexx</a><br />
The Winners were selected by the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/jury">jury</a> & participants from the 17 <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/applicants">applicants</a> who showcased themselves during the Summit.<br />
See more information on our main LTI Award <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/award">page</a>.<br />
- See more at: http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/award-2015#sthash.ngYjBzd8.dpuf</div>
<h3>
Launch of the LTI Cloud</h3>
<br />
Jochen Hummel - CEO, ESTeam and Chairman, LT-Innovate; Robert E. Etches - CIO, TextMinded; Luc Meertens - CEO, CrossLang; and Christoph Prinz - CEO, SailLabs called upon the Language Technology industry to join forces for the Launch of the LTI Cloud, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) wrapper which will make it easy to discover and plug ‘n’ play language technology components.<br />
<br />
For more information see <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/sites/default/files/Call%20for%20collaboration%20-%20LTI%20Cloud.pdf" target="_blank">letter</a> and <a href="https://prezi.com/yjrkxkgosh1i/lti-cloud/" target="_blank">presentation</a><br />
. <br />
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
Jochen
Hummel - CEO, ESTeam and Chairman, LT-Innovate; Robert E. Etches - CIO,
TextMinded; Luc Meertens - CEO, CrossLang; and Christoph Prinz - CEO,
SailLabs call upon the Language Technology industry to join forces for
the Launch of the LTI Cloud at the occasion of the LT-Innovate Summit on
26 June 2015. - See more at:
http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lt-observe/document/call-collaboration-join-us-launch-lti-cloud#sthash.8QNp6p0Q.dpuf</div>
<h3>
Industry Challenges</h3>
<br />
Several industry executives provided an overview of their company's current and future needs from a language technology point of view: <br />
<ul>
<li>Christian Dirschl, Chief Content Architect, <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=be71a8083e&e=9097c83b8e">Wolters Kluwer</a> Deutschland GmbH </li>
<li>Florence Beaujard, Head of Linguistics and Physiology for Cockpit Design, <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=e6bb1368b2&e=9097c83b8e">Airbus</a> </li>
<li>Armin Hopp, Founder, <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=452d11974b&e=9097c83b8e">Speexx</a> </li>
<li>Christophe Leclercq, Founder, <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=394cdfd58e&e=9097c83b8e">EurActiv</a> </li>
</ul>
Christian Dirschl wrote a <a href="http://solutions.wolterskluwer.com/blog/2015/07/is-the-glass-half-empty-or-half-full/" target="_blank">blog</a>, summarising his experience and offering the support of Wolters Kluwer for the next steps.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Keynote speakers</h3>
<br />
The Summit welcomed three keynote speakers representing the three institutions involved in policy making at EU level: <br />
<ul>
<li>Paul Rübig, Member of the European Parliament</li>
<li>Robert
Madelin, Director General, European Commission, DG CONNECT</li>
<li>Alexander De Croo, Belgian Federal Vice-prime Minister and Minister for Development Cooperation, the Digital Agenda, Telecommunications and Post </li>
</ul>
For more information, see blogs by <a href="http://ltinnovate.blogspot.be/2015/07/three-high-level-political-messages-for.html" target="_blank">Margaretha Mazura</a>, <a href="http://ltinnovate.blogspot.be/2015/07/le-traitement-automatique-des-langues.html" target="_blank">Charles Huot</a> (in French) and <a href="http://www.belgieninfo.net/innovationsgipfel-von-sprachtechnologie-unternehmen-in-bruessel/" target="_blank">BelgienInfo article</a> (in German).<br />
<br />
<h3>
Board of Directors</h3>
<br />
At the occasion of the Annual General Meeting of LT-Innovate, several new members of the Board of Directors were appointed: <br />
<ul>
<li>Robert Etches, CIO, TextMinded</li>
<li>Matthias Heyn, Vice President Global Solutions, SDL International </li>
<li>Charles Huot, COO, TEMIS </li>
</ul>
You will find a full list of the current Board of Directors <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/about/board-of-directors" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Key links </h3>
<br />
Here are additional links to find out more about LT-Innovate 2015:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/programme/2015" target="_blank">Programme and presentations</a><br />
<a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/speakers" target="_blank">Speakers </a><br />
<a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/participants" target="_blank">Participants</a><br />
<a href="http://t.co/cxhucqAEbd" target="_blank">Storify (summary)</a> drawing upon the #ltisummit Twitter stream<br />
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lt-innovate/sets/72157655199882876" target="_blank">Picture gallery</a> Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06574921634254800998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-25362670996013190172015-07-07T14:25:00.000+02:002015-07-08T14:22:51.460+02:00Three high-level political messages in support of a multilingual Digital Single Market<div style="text-align: justify;">
On 25-26 June 2015, experts, technicians researchers, business people, intermediaries and politicy makers got together at the LT-Innovate Summit in Brussels to discuss and explore how language technologies can make the Digital Single Market multilingual.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4EUmfKX4YAjuXK6ta7_ZQODGf08kqqvHBtEb07C3Rq4_NZXlq3XZ6s2POi37jsr0hXzL5uHRFHWKjuqKzddjM9vjT8KqbNxzdaOShDGGPF6TE-nOZ-kZv0XcvTAd4lQzHL9hJyO5cTE3x/s1600/IMG_1258.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4EUmfKX4YAjuXK6ta7_ZQODGf08kqqvHBtEb07C3Rq4_NZXlq3XZ6s2POi37jsr0hXzL5uHRFHWKjuqKzddjM9vjT8KqbNxzdaOShDGGPF6TE-nOZ-kZv0XcvTAd4lQzHL9hJyO5cTE3x/s200/IMG_1258.JPG" width="200" /> </a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
MEP Paul Rübig opening the LTi Summit 2015 </div>
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The first keynote by <a href="http://www.paulruebig.eu/">Austrian MEP Paul Rübig</a> set the scene: "Language technologies represent a substantial economic
power, they are set to grow dramatically, and thus, represent a great asset for Europe!". While languages are a representation of Europe's cultural heritage, they represent also an obstacle to cross-border trade. Paul Rübig emphasized that Europe's target should be to "remove language barriers as well as leverage on language diversity in order to support intra-European commerce and foster international trade. But this requires deep integration of language technologies in business processes and the public administration services. Therefore, the LT component must be part of the Digital Single Market". <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="List Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="List Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="List Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 2"/>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj653t4IOU6gKDNfIcN9Muouwf61nMAHYTokaH_i-yT5h-Xnmhu4QBAtXSsVGMuOXc_V8iZLhrvosoAGp_9nTNxQUxPVtVddwhnIxeTkKfQpkry2cKyRIYNiBYAIZTeu4hSsBZgwL_M9piL/s1600/DSCN1048.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj653t4IOU6gKDNfIcN9Muouwf61nMAHYTokaH_i-yT5h-Xnmhu4QBAtXSsVGMuOXc_V8iZLhrvosoAGp_9nTNxQUxPVtVddwhnIxeTkKfQpkry2cKyRIYNiBYAIZTeu4hSsBZgwL_M9piL/s200/DSCN1048.JPG" width="150" /> </a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
R. Madelin, Director-General DG CNECT </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The second high-level speaker was Director-General of DG CONNECT of the European Commission, <a href="https://be.linkedin.com/pub/robert-madelin/17/24b/2aa">Robert Madelin</a>, who will become Special Adviser on Innovation to President Juncker as of 1 September 2015. He pointed out that the "ability for all Europeans to get what they need in the language of their choice is a requirement of the 21th century". He emphasized that LT-Innovate had contributed to clarifying the vision, which now needs to be implement practically and concluded: "the European cloud has to include an answer to the challenge of languages. Multilingualism is a necessity for Europe!".</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIrnRwUZglDW7DT8ngQ3nrL_dan_7-n8KEjy4pJu8JAtAEgswyBP2m43mOQViK5k6ksaL8QTO0M5ap2VtskUDKAGvx0z9DpQbJYfP2VbgpsKIx8mH4gnTunnbLGlRgZZRtIxTBRC1uzGSd/s1600/Minister+A.+de+Croo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIrnRwUZglDW7DT8ngQ3nrL_dan_7-n8KEjy4pJu8JAtAEgswyBP2m43mOQViK5k6ksaL8QTO0M5ap2VtskUDKAGvx0z9DpQbJYfP2VbgpsKIx8mH4gnTunnbLGlRgZZRtIxTBRC1uzGSd/s200/Minister+A.+de+Croo.JPG" width="200" /> </a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Belgian Federal Vice Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The final keynote speaker of the event conquered the audience with a truly inspiring speech: Belgian Federal Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Development Cooperation, the Digital Agenda, Telecommunications and Post, <a href="http://be.linkedin.com/in/alexanderdecroo">Alexander de Croo</a>. He described the current digital landscape with all its opportunities but also issued some warnings: "Digital is one of the strongest democratic forces in the
world. The biggest opportunities are in the traditional industries,
here digital can make the big difference. Digital is a driving industry; language technology is
empowering it to go global. [...] At some stage everything will be connected - language technology will empower people to understand". When it comes to the people, his message is clear: "Give more attention to people! Engage the European community
in the creation of our digital future! We need to give more importance to eSkills, the educational system needs flexibility and innovation. I don't want an Einstein economy!" And he continued with another issue that was also raised at the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/page/summary-lto-dialogue-workshop-25-june-2015#overlay-context=&overlay=node/14780/edit">LTO dialogue workshop on language resources</a>: Trust! "We need trust. Give us more trust please in Europe and for Europeans. If you let people get on with it, people will do good
things. Give it a try". And he ended with a hint towards the EU policy: "Thinking behind the single market is futile if we do not
get rid of mobile roaming! Breaking up platforms is no solution! Creating the Digital Single Market will empower our own platforms." </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
See the Summit' s full <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit/programme">programme and presentations</a>.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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mmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00060027977214601987noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-31074362591024158122015-06-16T15:33:00.002+02:002015-11-20T15:40:34.001+01:00Over the Hurdle of Multilingualism to Global Leadership<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinvkVFEE98QGBYqpMUvI_qpAyRIEn4rNPzYuEhRXvQt7md4VtspauKh1Mm2SC86bK5iEZXgKHP7CzOnjBmvffZAf73ilr7tjMYuiM8yBSBmQsSj32cqFifjGliF3AaK9fPFvLU7YFuw0A/s1600/Jochen+Hummel_CA_300_sq_400x400.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinvkVFEE98QGBYqpMUvI_qpAyRIEn4rNPzYuEhRXvQt7md4VtspauKh1Mm2SC86bK5iEZXgKHP7CzOnjBmvffZAf73ilr7tjMYuiM8yBSBmQsSj32cqFifjGliF3AaK9fPFvLU7YFuw0A/s200/Jochen+Hummel_CA_300_sq_400x400.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Digital Single Market (DSM) has been declared a European priority by the European Commission. Rightfully so! Software eats everything and particularly eCommerce is enjoying dramatic growth rates and thus heavy investment. VP Andrus Ansip has nicely summarized the vision of the Digital Single Market: “<a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-2420_en.htm" target="_blank">Consumers need to be able to buy the best products at the best prices, wherever they are in Europe</a>.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today, unfortunately, that means that the consumer is in most cases spending her/his money on a non-European site. The numbers are actually shocking: according to a recent Commission infographic the Digital Market today is made up by 39% national online services (likely not giving you the best deal) and 57% by US-based online services. EU cross-border, however, represents only a minuscule four percent! </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Given also the potential for growth and new jobs, the Commission has launched a digital strategy to pave the way towards the DSM. It lists many laudable initiatives, like affordable parcel delivery costs, tackling of geo-blocking, simplifying VAT arrangements (after they just have been made unmanageable for cross-border SMEs), modernizing copyright, and strengthening European data protection rules. All this will surely help, but does it really address the core challenge of the Digital Single Market?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Commissioner Oettinger recently stated that "<a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/oettinger/announcements/speech-what-digital-union-europe-bruegel-conference-warsaw_en" target="_blank">a Polish citizen being refused to buy products on a German website is not compatible with the idea of Europe</a>". I am not so sure whether that online business is really rejecting the customer. Why should it? It probably rather has a hard time communicating with this customer. But worse, the Polish citizen likely never managed to find the German website. A simple search already breaks the vision of border-less shopping. Enter a string in your language and the search results will already trap you in your national market. But even if a product name search crossed these language silos, the Polish citizen probably won’t understand what the German website is offering and under which conditions.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The main hurdle towards a Digital Single Market are Europe’s many languages. It’s amazing how politics, but also business, have overlooked this so far! Or maybe rather chosen to ignore it? Perhaps because they don’t know how to solve it? The big investments in technologies to overcome the language barrier have often produced only academic results. The field is dominated by research institutions and small niche players. This makes it hard to discover, purchase, and deploy language technology solutions.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Luckily, language technologies can today indeed enable the Polish citizen to find, buy, and use a German product or vice versa. By using data-driven approaches, innovative language technologies such as search, automatic translation, voice recognition, knowledge management, sentiment analysis, and many others, have achieved acceptable quality for the major languages. They are ready to be deployed in European eCommerce sites.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
However, for achieving the vison of the Digital Single Market, we have to support at least all our 24 official languages and those of our most important trading partners. This requires a basic natural language processing (NLP) infrastructure. The European Language Technology industry is therefore pushing for the European Language Cloud (ELC), a public infrastructure providing the basic functionality required to process unstructured content. Through an API the ELC provides basic language technology services such as tokenization, named entity detection, etc. for all languages, in the same base quality, under the same favorable terms.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
On top of this infrastructure, European language technology companies, mostly SMEs, will expose their offerings in the LTI Cloud. The LTI Cloud is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) wrapper around language technology components and functions as a marketplace. It will make it easy for start-ups, eCommerce, system integrators, and software companies to discover and plug ‘n’ play language technology.<br />
<br />
The fourth edition of the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lti-summit" target="_blank">LT-Innovate Summit</a>, the yearly point of convergence of the Language Technology industry, will explore how to concretely launch these crucial building blocks for the DSM.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In a recent article, the Washington Post mocked Europe’s DSM efforts by stating that "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/06/08/europes-innovation-deficit-isnt-disappearing-any-time-soon/" target="_blank">Europe’s digital decline is accelerating</a>". I would counter that. Why don’t we turn this much moaned about hurdle of Europe’s multilingualism into a unique opportunity? If we manage, in spite of our many cultures and languages, to create a Multilingual Digital Single Market and cross-border eGov, we will become the fittest for the global market.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<b>Jochen Hummel</b> is CEO of ESTeam & Coreon and Chairman of LT-InnovateAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06574921634254800998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-36046029575849680342015-06-10T17:16:00.000+02:002015-06-16T15:47:09.343+02:00Major disruption ahead in the language industry!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.gala-global.org/GALAxy/Q2-2015/5665" target="_blank"></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.gala-global.org/GALAxy/Q2-2015/5665" target="_blank"><img alt="http://www.gala-global.org/GALAxy/Q2-2015/5665" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ6vFlRfv_cSbFw_jUVHcqf4Y8fK3XZKf3vBz7gToMFF_azTFa9AlwOujF2ZeDykMDREHZCZz-tk3bpnB7mW6f5GITq0ylGrOrm0oSFNqUtmWR-t7NR3UA9Y3n-XW3TdM255MkiA9AqSY/s1600/GALAxy.JPG" /></a></div>
The <a href="http://www.gala-global.org/GALAxy/Q2-2015/5665" target="_blank">Q2 issue</a> of GALAxy, the quarterly newsletter of our partner association GALA, is guest edited by LT-Innovate Chairman Jochen Hummel (@JochenHummel) with a thought provoking piece on how Language Technology will leverage Big Data and transform the industry. <br />
<br />
Several other articles are contributed and/or co-authored by LT-Innovate members and partners:<br />
<ul>
<li>Big Data and the Translation Industry: Three Technology Challenges by Andrew Joscelyne, LT Innovate</li>
<li>Finding New Business Segments Through Big Data by Michael Wetzel, Coreon GmbH & Matthias Heyn, SDL plc </li>
<li>How to Improve Your Relationship with Machine Translation co-authored by Heidi Depraetere, CrossLang </li>
<li>Unlocking Language Resource Assets by Christian Galinski, Infoterm </li>
<li>Riga Summit Forges a Unified Vision for Multilingual Europe by Rihards Kalniņš, Tilde</li>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06574921634254800998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-53480634272479736272015-06-08T11:40:00.002+02:002015-06-16T15:41:14.045+02:00Highlights of the LT-Innovate Summit - Brussels, 25-26 June 2015<br />
<h3>
Keynotes</h3>
<br />
The fourth edition of the <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=f62a98f2db&e=9097c83b8e">LT-Innovate Summit</a>, the yearly point of convergence of the Language Technology industry, will take place in Brussels on 25-26 June 2015. It will benefit of the presence of leading policy makers: <br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Paul Rübig, Member of the European Parliament </li>
<li>Alexander De Croo, Vice Prime Minister of Belgium, Minister for the Digital Agenda </li>
<li>Robert Madelin, Director General, European Commission, DG CONNECT </li>
</ul>
<br />
<h3>
Launch of the LTI Cloud</h3>
<br />
<img align="none" height="146" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6/images/ce2b531a-408a-4143-a50e-9f451a0203cb.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; border: 0; height: auto !important; margin: 0px; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" width="123" /><br />
<br />
Jochen Hummel, LT-Innovate Chairman:<br />
<br />
<i>"We are launching the LTI Cloud on 26 June as a major new initiative that has the potential to benefit all our members. The aim of the LTI Cloud is to create a SaaS wrapper around language technology components developed by LT-Innovate members. It will make it easy for entrepreneurs, start-ups, software developers, IT departments, system integrators, and many others to source & plug ‘n’ play language technology components, allowing them to focus on their core business and competencies. Join us to find out more and make the LTI Cloud a success!"</i><br />
<br />
See <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/sites/default/files/Call%20for%20collaboration%20-%20LTI%20Cloud.pdf#overlay-context=lt-observe/document/call-collaboration-join-us-launch-lti-cloud" target="_blank">call for collaboration</a> - Join us to launch the LTI Cloud!<br />
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
Join us to Launch the LTI Cloud!</div>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
Join us to Launch the LTI Cloud!</div>
<h3>
</h3>
<h3>
LT CEO Summit and Industry Challenges</h3>
<br />
As every year, we have lined up a roster of "challengers": <br />
<ul>
<li>Christian Dirschl, Chief Content Architect, <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=be71a8083e&e=9097c83b8e">Wolters Kluwer</a> Deutschland GmbH </li>
<li>Florence Beaujard, Head of Linguistics and Physiology for Cockpit Design, <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=e6bb1368b2&e=9097c83b8e">Airbus</a> </li>
<li>Armin Hopp, Founder, <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=452d11974b&e=9097c83b8e">Speexx</a> </li>
<li>Christophe Leclercq, Founder, <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=394cdfd58e&e=9097c83b8e">EurActiv</a> </li>
</ul>
<br />
These high level industry executives will provide an overview of their company's current and future needs from a language technology point of view. Do not miss the opportunity to participate in these forward looking "challenges".<br />
<br />
<h3>
LT-Innovate Award 2015</h3>
<br />
Discover "The Best in LT", network with entrepreneurs, experts and investors... and celebrate the Winners of our prestigious industry Award.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Workshop on the future of conversational interaction technologies</h3>
<br />
We are collaborating with leading academics to prepare a Research and Innovation Roadmap for multilingual and multimodal conversational technologies. The current version of the roadmap is available at <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=dbcb962cab&e=9097c83b8e">citia.eu</a>.<br />
<br />
The main goal of the workshop is to collect feedback and recommendations on (1) refining the research & innovation scenarios; (2) mechanisms to bridge the gap between research (including cognitive sciences) & innovation; (3) further development of the stakeholder community; and (4) how to develop a startup culture to bridge the gap between the excellent research base and commercial reality.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Workshop on language resources: foundations of the multilingual digital single market</h3>
<br />
This workshop aims at identifying concrete scenarios for the improvement of the usability of Language Resources (LR). It is split into 3 interrelated panels: LR demand, LR supply and Matching LR offer to demand. Panelists from industry, research and the public sector will, in particular, discuss the following questions: <br />
<ul>
<li>How can LR identification become a more streamlined, accessible and easily achieved activity? </li>
<li>Where and how can LRs be found and identified to solve a specific MT problem? </li>
<li>Who would be able to do the work as a service? </li>
<li>How can terminology of a given field and text data relevant to the same field be found online in a dependable way? </li>
<li>What are the major barriers for finding and using LRs from existing repositories? </li>
<li>What would be best ways to overcome these barriers? </li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<h2>
Check out the full <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=f4e855da2b&e=9097c83b8e">programme</a> and register <a href="http://lt-innovate.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7edb7df4908dbcd16dccbb9c6&id=c7904b7f91&e=9097c83b8e">here</a>!</h2>
<br />
<h2>
</h2>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06574921634254800998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-34259851912868961552015-04-30T15:11:00.000+02:002015-06-16T15:47:30.766+02:00Broad Language Industry Coalition launches Call for Action: The Digital Single Market Must Be Multilingual!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/sites/default/files/Multilingual%20Digital%20Single%20Market%20Call%20for%20Action.pdf#overlay-context=users/phwlt-innovateeu" target="_blank"><img alt="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/sites/default/files/Multilingual%20Digital%20Single%20Market%20Call%20for%20Action.pdf#overlay-context=users/phwlt-innovateeu" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjva4wakN_UFeZIR0zM4cm-YPRnBWhsaO35pmP1mVxcOeBhuX4FvbZ2XklyPcVwwDUSu_s-xcx1gzIQiGqsMZNPvSQ-JmwiRYwmDfYqDzgF7lVdEBTJ3s2r9LaNXurQPtASij8oZzrTEBOx/s1600/SRIA-blog.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At the occasion of the <a href="http://www.rigasummit2015.eu/" target="_blank">Riga Summit on the Multilingual Digital Single Market</a>, held on 27-29 April 2015, a broad coalition of organisations representing the language industries came together to sign a <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lt-observe/document/riga-summit-declaration-common-interest" target="_blank">Declaration of Common Interest</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Riga Summit also launched a <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/lt-observe/document/multilingual-europe-crowning-touch-digital-single-market-call-action" target="_blank">Call for Action</a> entitled "Multilingual Europe: The Crowning Touch to the Digital Single Market". </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Declaration and Call for Action emphasise the importance of language technologies as key enablers for a truly multilingual Digital Single Market.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For additional media coverage of the Riga Summit, see "<a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/04/multilingualism-and-eu-0?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/multilingualismandeu" target="_blank">Babelitious</a>" in The Economist, "<a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sections/languages-culture/will-digital-single-market-be-multilingual-314260" target="_blank">Will the Digital Single Market be multilingual?</a>", "<a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sections/innovation-industry/language-technologist-europe-needs-language-infrastructure-not-just" target="_blank">Europe needs a language infrastructure, not just Google Translate</a>" (interview of Jochen Hummel, ESTeam) and "<a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sections/infosociety/language-entrepreneur-smaller-languages-could-be-lost-digital-single-market" target="_blank">Smaller languages could be lost in the Digital Single Market</a>" (interview of Andrejs Vasiljevs, Tilde) in EurActiv. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06574921634254800998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-65753626770459623422015-03-29T11:47:00.000+02:002015-06-16T16:03:02.006+02:00Data, architectures, and other forms of cooperation<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
In my last blog <a href="http://ltinnovate.blogspot.fr/2015/03/do-we-really-want-smart-personal.html">post</a>, I argued that
Europe can't win the game of who can field the best-known, most
widely used smart personal assistant – and since these assistants
are really impersonal, we wouldn't want to. We want an eco-system of
companies doing what they do best: spotting a need, filling it
well, and cooperating with each other.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
We talked at the <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/citia/">ROCKIT Roadmap Conference</a> about data and infrastructure and necessary connections,
but here I have to tread on dangerous territory – by tying lots of
things together into a story about practical action for CITIA to
take. All the bits of the story come from someone who was there, but
do they work together to make what we need?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
One of the recurring themes of the
conference is that we need to share data with each other so that all
of our algorithms and products improve. This needs to start with
academics. Many academics feel that data collected using public
resources should be public. That doesn't make releasing it easy.
It's very difficult to make scientists, who are always chasing the
next publishable result, stop before the end of a project so that
they have enough resource left to package the data, set license
terms, and release it. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Anonymization can be both necessary, and
expensive – especially since there isn't general agreement about
what level of certainty is legally acceptable. In addition,
postdoctoral researchers and students often don't have the skills to
do a decent job on packaging. They have trouble thinking like
someone who doesn't already understand what they've produced, so
their documentation can be very poor indeed. I think this is an
important part of any future job – academic or otherwise – so
training is part of the solution. However, I also think data
repositories need enough support to be able to curate the good from
the bad and quality check packaging in time that data producers can
correct it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
I also think it's hard to engineer data
sharing among companies – but we did generally agree that the best
way to make headway is to start working together to target our
customer contacts, picking off each vertical separately. I actually
think if this were to happen, the data sharing would come as a side
effect. So the main action here is finding out how CITIA can
encourage this kind of working together, rather than thinking about
data itself.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Another recurring theme was that we
need open architectures and at least de facto standards, so that
academics and businesses can each concentrate on the part they do
best. That's great, but it has to get less vague very quickly.
We've agreed that will be an important part of our work in the second
year of our support action, but what are the best actions that
actually fit a relatively small budget we have to achieve the results
we need? When I get stuck on big problems like this, I try to think
about the nearest successful analogue to the problem at hand, and the
history of how that collaborative system emerged. What is the most
similar story we can think of – some major open source system like
Wordpress? Solutions from the logistics industry? I'm really not
sure, myself, but someone must have a better vision than I do. Let us know!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Jean Carletta, Edinburgh University</b></div>
Andrew Joscelynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03335028513354707926noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-11283984360922274872015-03-26T18:29:00.003+01:002015-06-16T15:48:29.097+02:00Europe's Digital Single Market must be multilingual!<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWisGCtSTgaNbPrkXArc4fd9sr4PlDWrcgVuvh6ud2uHFi-B0cxHEX_i-1GAk2ggw9bDjDaF5crAr0shBVD0xnkKMxPjChwww3UFcNQSsQppvAYce09DU_Aucuuljzao5D7yLl_hgRmo_/s1600/AnsipKalnins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWisGCtSTgaNbPrkXArc4fd9sr4PlDWrcgVuvh6ud2uHFi-B0cxHEX_i-1GAk2ggw9bDjDaF5crAr0shBVD0xnkKMxPjChwww3UFcNQSsQppvAYce09DU_Aucuuljzao5D7yLl_hgRmo_/s1600/AnsipKalnins.jpg" width="194" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vice-President A. Ansip and R. <span class="" id=":3b2" title="Rihards Kalniņš">Kalniņš</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
More than 3000 members and stakeholders of Europe's Language Community signed an <a href="http://www.multilingualeurope.eu/">Open Letter to the European Commission</a>: <b>"Europe's Digital single market must be multilingual"</b>. On the occasion of an official lunch in Riga on 26 March 2015, <span class="" id=":3b2" title="Rihards Kalniņš">Rihards Kalniņš, Marketing Communications Manager at <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/directory/organisation/tilde">TILDE</a> handed the Open Letter with more than 3000 </span><span class="" id=":3b2" title="Rihards Kalniņš"><span class="" id=":3b2" title="Rihards Kalniņš">printed </span>signatures to </span><span class="" id=":3b2" title="Rihards Kalniņš"><span class="" id=":3b2" title="Rihards Kalniņš"><a href="http://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/ansip_en">Andrus Ansip</a>,</span> Vice-President of the European Commission. The latter expressed his awareness of the multilingual challenge in building the Digital Single Market, was impressed </span><span class="" id=":3b2" title="Rihards Kalniņš">by the number of signatures and asked for further input from Europe's Language Community. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="" id=":3b2" title="Rihards Kalniņš"><a href="http://www.multilingualeurope.eu/#sign">Join the initiative and sign the Open Letter!</a></span></div>
mmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00060027977214601987noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-10725724486733215652015-03-15T13:18:00.000+01:002015-06-16T15:48:15.394+02:00Do we really want smart personal assistants?<div style="text-align: justify;">
During the ROCKIT Roadmap Conference in February, I was designated to take notes and summarize the results of the session for scenario 2, “smart personal assistants.” That's harder than it sounds! I think the most important thing we learned was that whether European businesses will be successful in this emerging technology area is highly dependent on the business models they adopt and the culture that develops in Europe around them.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When people think about smart personal assistants, they immediately assume that the goal is to build a rival to things like Siri – an engine that can assist any user on a wide range of topics. This is actually a no-go strategy for European business for two reasons.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The first is that it's not the European way. This kind of generic personal assistant makes a great sales vehicle for global giants, but is poor at delivering what the customer actually wants. By its very nature, it's really more of a smart *im*personal agent on commission. Historically, European businesses have been based on a strong business-to-business orientation. They understand their local contexts and verticals well, and provide better end-user products and services because of it. Their offerings are niche – sometimes so niche they're just ways of getting around the limitations in some technology one of the giants has been pushing – but there's no shame in that. It may not be the way to fast growth and glitzy headlines, but I for one would rather provide genuinely useful products and services. Couple that with the fact that it's what we do well and there's really no question about the right approach.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The second reason why it's a bad strategy for our community is that even if we wanted too, we couldn't compete for one simple reason – data. These systems work because the giants fielded them among enthusiasts when they were just “good enough”, and improved them massively with larger and larger amounts of data as their use grew. Yes, we need to do more to share data among ourselves, and yes, we may well have better machine learning – but they have first starter advantage. The group consensus was that it would take us ten years before we were ready to start thinking about fielding a rival system, by which time the world will look completely different.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Once we recognize that this is the shape of the game that we're in, it tells us much more about what kind of community infrastructure and cooperation we need to create in order to support each other and do better all round. That will be the subject of my next blog post.</div>
<br />
<b>Jean Carletta, University of Edinburgh</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<i>We invite stakeholders of all kinds to comment on these views, whether or not they were at the Roadmap Conference - are they right? Please use the comment facility below.</i>Andrew Joscelynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03335028513354707926noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-36958712193332474352015-02-13T14:42:00.001+01:002015-06-16T15:48:52.916+02:00A glance at the latest and most comprehensive Roadmap for Conversational Interaction Technologies<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjqaGQwqn4y1iDjAH_M4jpCQAY9gMuINRKKtyyAmqk-frn2hyphenhyphenmZrAz2c8dClvSgt3U-YRgwTH6JKhIi0eyeUZlVpGUhyphenhyphenQvpqy7GCOPYgrZ9usWhyJkfynBfrXYRhsxQ-K3bIt67ftv0hWz/s1600/showlogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjqaGQwqn4y1iDjAH_M4jpCQAY9gMuINRKKtyyAmqk-frn2hyphenhyphenmZrAz2c8dClvSgt3U-YRgwTH6JKhIi0eyeUZlVpGUhyphenhyphenQvpqy7GCOPYgrZ9usWhyJkfynBfrXYRhsxQ-K3bIt67ftv0hWz/s1600/showlogo.png" /></a>The CITIA Roadmap Conference, with an impressive line-up of speakers and panellists, is around the corner (<a href="http://www.e-unlimited.com/events/view.aspx?events_pages_id=3058">24-25 Feb in Brussels</a>). We are excited to announce that the first version of the <a href="http://www.rockit-project.eu/">ROCKIT</a> strategic roadmap, which will drive many of the sessions of the upcoming Conference and used to set the priorities of <a href="http://www.lt-accelerate.eu/citia">CITIA</a>, is now available to view online.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<img src="file:///C:/Users/William/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg" />To main goal of the roadmap is to engage public or private research organisations, including SMEs, into a constructive discussion towards full exploitation of new conversational interaction technologies. The roadmap should enable our community to compare prominent use cases, products and services, science and engineering capabilities, as well as readiness, needs and timeframes for future R&D. Entrepreneurs and researchers can use it to focus their R&D, partnerships and related strategic efforts. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This first version of the roadmap is the result of an on-going (2-year) consultative process which in its first year alone involved over 100 experts who provided their input during five physical workshops organised in conjunction with major sector events. For the science/technology areas alone, some 1,000 inputs were captured during these workshops. All those inputs were clustered, filtered and linked together across several layers, including:</div>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li>10 societal Drivers & Constraints</li>
<li>5 generic R&D Scenarios</li>
<li>10 Product/Service Types, with the added value, a SWOT analysis and a 10 year timeline for each of them.</li>
<li>8 Science/Technology Areas, with cluster and 10 year timelines for each of them.</li>
<li>7 Resource Types</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The graphical version as well as a presentation of the first version of the roadmap is easily accessible via <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ROCKIT-v1">http://tinyurl.com/ROCKIT-v1</a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<img border="0" src="file:///C:/Users/William/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image004.jpg" /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVhK3uG7cgCe5NnZJ9le5DE0qha5bdoOmz16p57isdinz-x5kzwFG-Ye_TMBeXS6oQzEKCtjXrU_pdVWSn5iy8bS1WETMe75J1hmSe-ZEVF87E4KNRxW42cVIfzTwyLqk44KNW2oov3kgO/s1600/screen01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVhK3uG7cgCe5NnZJ9le5DE0qha5bdoOmz16p57isdinz-x5kzwFG-Ye_TMBeXS6oQzEKCtjXrU_pdVWSn5iy8bS1WETMe75J1hmSe-ZEVF87E4KNRxW42cVIfzTwyLqk44KNW2oov3kgO/s1600/screen01.png" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #999999;">Figure 1 Initial view showing five interrelated layers.</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The initial view (depicted in Figure 1) shows the main interacting layers, including: Drivers & Constraints (the “why”); Scenarios; Product/Service Types (the “what”); Science/Technology Areas (the “how”); and Resources. By hovering over any item, one may choose to see either a) a short description of that item or b) the cross-layer relationships with other items. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Clicking on any of the Product/Service Types or Science/Technology Areas allows drilling down to detailed information such as a SWOT analysis of a Product/Service Type (Figure 2), or the foreseen 10 year timeline for a particular Science/Technology Area (Figure 3).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<img border="0" src="file:///C:/Users/William/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image006.jpg" /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdKAbjYLPYMBOdRJv6BHlRhJGQv0tRC_NfGipiODQlFN4B01XqSNyte-d2_9zuNoUJUE3QqYsCyOYOegIE5jfR4SnEbdebELIurfZv0Y3FOaiNH_nHp008hOv6C9o0FkzxRy9XNah7Ezuy/s1600/screen06c.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdKAbjYLPYMBOdRJv6BHlRhJGQv0tRC_NfGipiODQlFN4B01XqSNyte-d2_9zuNoUJUE3QqYsCyOYOegIE5jfR4SnEbdebELIurfZv0Y3FOaiNH_nHp008hOv6C9o0FkzxRy9XNah7Ezuy/s1600/screen06c.png" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999;"><i>Figure 2 The SWOT analysis of Generic Personal Assistants, under Product/Service Types.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<img border="0" src="file:///C:/Users/William/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image008.jpg" /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPY37GbUapbwRf6r1SnjLtXj6LGbIkcZGSpS-yDDr55d2rX5jhrQ64VuISmS-QWVyjYQIzPdM0UsOlA0cmvxm-K6VM2208l3XN4snJBd0XiMijlBL074m587cyWBFgS8Glp3hr_5WDdw-3/s1600/wp3_l8_timeline.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPY37GbUapbwRf6r1SnjLtXj6LGbIkcZGSpS-yDDr55d2rX5jhrQ64VuISmS-QWVyjYQIzPdM0UsOlA0cmvxm-K6VM2208l3XN4snJBd0XiMijlBL074m587cyWBFgS8Glp3hr_5WDdw-3/s1600/wp3_l8_timeline.png" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999;"><i>Figure 3 The 10 year timeline of the Natural Language Interpretation & Generation, under Science/Technology Areas</i></span>.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
We now very much encourage discussions around the roadmap’s contents before, during or after the Conference. We are particularly interested in:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li>Verifying relationships between items</li>
<li>Establishing their readiness levels as well as</li>
<li>Measuring their expected social and economic impact.</li>
</ul>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If you want to be involved, just create a <a href="https://my.sharpcloud.com/signup">free account</a> and visit the roadmap to add your comments and cast your votes.</div>
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Article contributed by <b>Costis Kompis</b>, Vodera</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Costis Kompis is the managing partner of Vodera, a company that supports private and public organisations align their R&D activities, develop innovation strategies for emerging technologies and design new business models to capture market opportunities.</div>
William Bressandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123830622131169270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-79502994832738759512014-12-09T12:46:00.002+01:002015-05-08T12:52:45.262+02:00LT-Accelerate: A Major Text Analytics-Meets-Multilingual Talkfest in Brussels<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
LT-Innovate and <a href="http://altaplana.com/">Alta Plana</a>, headed by text analytics community
builder Seth Grimes, combined forces last week (4 - 5 Dec) to launch the
first <b>LT-Accelerate </b>conference in Brussels. This attracted a broad range of analytics
technologists and user companies to an in-depth conversation about the LT contribution to
business opportunities in text and speech analytics, with a discreet emphasis on
the multilingual European context.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
For those who missed it, there’s a handy summary at <a href="https://storify.com/LTInnovate/lt-accelerate-conference-2014" target="_blank">Storify</a>. The presentations and pictures of the event are on the event's <a href="http://ltaccelerate.eu/" target="_blank">website</a>. You may also want to check out the <a href="https://twitter.com/LTaccelerate" target="_blank">@LTAccelerate</a> Twitter channel and hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/#Lta14" target="_blank">#LTA14</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Basic text analytics is now maturing,
with a growing stable of tech companies offering APIs to their NP solutions or
dashboards that help user companies make sense of their “unstructured” data.
At the same time, the relevance of the binary sentiment analysis models is
starting to reach its limits for many users, who henceforth need more insight
into how human emotions and intentions are expressed linguistically in the decision-making
process. And multilingual text data modelling continues to raise barriers for
global players, either due to the inherent structure of languages or to a lack
of reach. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Here are four takeaways that we shall explore further in
future blogs:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>The future of market research</b>:
one of the biggest users of text analytics is the Market Research industry (worth
$61.45B globally) and currently morphing into a digital player by adopting new technologies
of automated listening, mining and engaging. For MR, the future will involve among other phenomena a billion new Chinese tourists (think language, travel tech,
tourist infrastructures, and communication generally) – an extraordinary opportunity
for almost any business in Europe if they know how to address the challenge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Getting Down to Semantics: </b>The market opportunity for text analytics covers at least two
very different families of data: <i>business-generated
text</i> such as that provided by publishers, and every other customer-facing
enterprise. And <i>user-generated data</i>,
often sourced in social media and customer reviews.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Havas Media showed how they can now classify customer
generated data into one of the four stages of the “customer decision journey” on
the basis of linguistic cues, with a success rate of some 74%. This allows them
to automate the classification of short consumer messages and thereby vitally inform retailers and others about the crucial decision process those customers go through.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
On the business content production side, Elsevier demonstrated how
they use proprietary semantic technology – known as a Fingerprint Engine - to
enrich existing text from authors, patents, and increasingly foreign language
data so that specialised STM searches can be apply concepts rather than words
alone. This can enable a science author,
for example, to find exactly the right journal that matches his research specialty.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We shall come back in a later blog to other semantic
solutions in this space. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Generation A to Z: </b>The most unexpected data point in the whole event might well
have been the claim by Robert Dale (Arria) that “by 2020, more texts in the
world will be produced by machine than by humans.” Three European content generation
tech suppliers (Data2Content, Yseop, and Arria) addressed the apparently massive
market for automatically generating content <i>from</i>
data, rather than <i>about </i>data. The challenges here are to understand data as information
(which is where semantics comes in) and then to turn that information into a
narrative that tells a story. In a sense, therefore, what natural language generation
will be able to do is take the results of data analytics – i.e. data – and use language
technology solutions to turn it into content that humans (and also machines
presumably) want to read. Watch this space!</div>
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<b>Relevant Data is not
always Big</b>: Although we were treated to some large numerical data points
during the conference - IBM recorded 53 million social media posts during the
64 games of the Brazil World Cup this year and a 50-agent speech contact centre
can generate about 11Tb of voice recordings a year – the oil company Total told
a story about small data. It highlighted the extremely practical virtues of smart search, analysis and
presentation of smallish sets of highly relevant data from a corpus on oil-well safety-standard
issues. This showed how you can mine value from text data to optimise knowledge
sharing within a business. And it demonstrated that in many cases business clients
will want to tailor the solution to their own needs. A useful lesson in how to market
certain kinds of text analytics solutions!</div>
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Andrew Joscelynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03335028513354707926noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-69061869438715359492014-11-21T11:47:00.001+01:002015-05-08T12:53:02.339+02:00Quick Q&A: On the Earned Media Value of a Brand’s Social Activities<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9sj0GOWQsYY/VG8VtGizK-I/AAAAAAAAABk/bfuIdOtTSDA/s1600/Roland-Fiege-sRGB-fuer-Web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9sj0GOWQsYY/VG8VtGizK-I/AAAAAAAAABk/bfuIdOtTSDA/s1600/Roland-Fiege-sRGB-fuer-Web.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Earned, paid, and owned media are distinct species. If you haven’t laid out cash for a mention of your brand, product, or personnel in a media outlet, whether online or social, you’re deemed to have earned the coverage. (Take “earned” with a grain of salt. You may have laid out big bucks for a publicist or efforts to build your brand’s visibility.) If you’ve bought the coverage — advertising, for instance — that’s paid. And if it’s your outlet, then that media is owned.</div>
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Whether media is earned, paid, or owned, you want to measure the extent of attention and the effectiveness of your message. The effort can get quite involved, when multiple channels and multiple exposures are in the mix. The get a precise picture, you have to engage in attribution modeling. When social platforms come into play, the effort can be substantial.</div>
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General social business challenges, and technical responses, are central topics at <a href="http://lt-acclerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a>, a unique European conference, taking place December 4-5, 2014 in Brussels. We’ll have Roland Fiege of IPG Mediabrands speaking, on methodologies and tools for measuring the earned value of brand social-media activity. If this topic interests you as well, you’ll want to learn more. A quick Q&A I recently conducted with Roland is a start, then I hope you’ll join us in Brussels. First a brief bio –</div>
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Roland Fiege is head of social strategy at <a href="http://breakthroughanalysis.com/2014/11/20/social-media-analytics-roland-fiege/www.mediabrands.social">Mediabrands Social</a>, home of <a href="http://www.performly.social/">Performly</a>. In his spare time, he is working on a PhD project researching methodologies for measuring the value add of marketing on Facebook and Twitter. And next, -</div>
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Our interview with Roland Fiege</h2>
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<b>Q1: The topic of this Q&A is social media analytics. What’s your personal SMA background and your current work role?</b></div>
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Roland Fiege:<i> My personal SMA background started with consulting projects evaluating social media listening systems back in 2009. In 2010-11, I was part of an international team at US technology company MicroStrategy that developed a solution that analyzed the social graphs of Facebook users to help brands to understand the interests and affinities of their “fans” better.<br /><br />In my current work role, we analyze user interactions responding to brand messages on social media channels and have developed a model that attributes an monetary “earned media value” to these interactions. This allows brands to quantify and valuate the outcome of their social media investments.</i><i><br /></i><i>In my current work role, we analyze user interactions responding to brand messages on social media channels and have developed a model that attributes an monetary “earned media value” to these interactions. This allows brands to quantify and valuate the outcome of their social media investments.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q2: What are key technical and business goals of the analyses you’re involved in?</b></div>
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Roland Fiege: <i>The technical challenges are to keep the solution up to date with ongoing API changes by the most popular social networks and how to loop back “real time” bidding price benchmarks into our systems (vs. a static benchmark). Another challenge is to meet the EU data privacy standards that enterprises,German especially, try to comply with.<br /><br />Business-wise, the challenge is to establish a common understanding how to attribute and valuate user interactions.</i><i><br /></i><i>Business-wise, the challenge is to establish a common understanding how to attribute and valuate user interactions.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q3: And what particular analytics approaches or technologies do you favor, whether for text, network, geospatial, behavioral, or other analyses?</b></div>
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Roland Fiege: <i>We basically gave up on automated text analysis when it comes to sentiment. It never worked in Europe with all the different languages, dialects, irony etc. There was too much manual work involved that clients were not willing to pay for.<br /><br />Currently we concentrate on the quantification for user engagement and its financial valuation.</i><i><br /></i></blockquote>
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<b>Q4: To what extent do you get into sentiment and subjective information?</b></div>
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Roland Fiege:<i> Our experience is that if users like, share, and comment on brand content, it mostly is positive or neutral sentiment involved. Contrary to this, most user posts on brand channels are negative and in correlation with negative customer experiences. Since we measure the monetary value of brand communication, we only measure fans/follower interactions on brand content.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q5: How do you recommend dealing with high-volume, high-velocity, diverse social postings — to ensure that analyses draw on the most complete and relevant data available and deliver the most accurate results possible?</b></div>
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Roland Fiege: <i>We do not only rely on the APIs that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube (Google) provide but also user other (fire hose) data providers to get the most complete picture/dataset, also for retrospective analysis.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q6: Could you provide an example (or two) that illustrates really well what you’ve been able to accomplish via SMA, that demonstrate strong ROI?</b></div>
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Roland Fiege: <i>What we accomplish: Clients manage to optimize their content strategies in near real time, can compare the performance of their content (agencies) in different regions and countries, and can identify savings potential in the millions. It is the first time brands can calculate the total cost of ownership of their social media channels and have a clear Input vs. Outcome result all condensed into one KPI: Money.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q7: I’m glad you’ll be speaking at <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a>. Please tell me about your presentation, briefly: What attendees will learn.</b></div>
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Roland Fiege: <i>In this talk you will learn about the latest methodologies and tools to measure the Earned Media value of a brand’s activities on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in hard currency.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q8: Finally, do you have recommendations to share, regarding choice of data sources, metrics, analytical methods, and visualizations, in order to best align with desired business outcome?</b></div>
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<i>I will share those in my presentation in as much detail as possible.</i></blockquote>
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Thank you, Roland, for your responses. I’m looking forward to hearing more, at <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a> in Brussels.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #4d469c; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 0px; background: transparent; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border: 1px solid transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" /></a></div>
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<br />
This Interview has been done by <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/seth-grimes">Mr. Seth Grimes</a>, the leading industry analyst covering text analytics, sentiment analysis, and analysis on the confluence of structured and unstructured data sources and founder of Alta Plana Corp.
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-83580360962760603712014-11-19T11:58:00.000+01:002014-11-19T12:10:26.966+01:00How Havas Media Views Consumer & Market Analytics<div class="p1" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<img alt="Inés Campanella, Havas Media" height="151" src="https://breakthroughanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/inc3a9s-campanella.jpg?w=270&h=205" width="200" /></div>
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Our thesis: Language technologies — text, speech, and social analytics — natural language processing and semantic analysis – are the key to understanding consumer, market, and public voices. Apply them to extract the full measure of business value from social and online media, customer interactions and other enterprise data, scientific and financial information, and a spectrum of other sources. The insight you’ll gain means competitive edge, whatever your organization’s mission.<br />
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Insight, via business (and research and government) application of language technologies, is the central topic for <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a>, a new conference that takes place December 4-5 in Brussels.<br />
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I recently interviewed a number of LT-Accelerate speakers. My questions broadly cover the topics they’ll be addressing in their conference presentations. This article relays my Q&A with speaker Inés Campanella of Havas Media Group and her colleague Óscar Muñoz-García. I’ll provide a bit of background and short bios and then we’ll get directly to the questions and responses.<br />
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Our interview with Inés Campanella and Oscar <span style="background-color: transparent; text-align: justify;">Muñoz-García</span></h2>
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<b>Q1: The topic of this Q&A is consumer and market insight. What’s your personal background and your current work role, as they relate to these domains?</b></div>
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Inés Campanella: <i>I hold a B.A in Sociology and a M.A in Research Methods. Through my work and studies, I specialized in the field of Sociology of Communication and Information Society. Given my background, I’m very keen on new communication models and behavior patterns mediated by new media (i.e., social networks and other social media) and how we can profit from this amazing stream of behavioral data to increase our knowledge of social behavior. </i></div>
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<i>At Havas Media I work as a researcher within the Global Corporate Development Team. My role involves integrating scholarly research and social theory into market research, designing a conceptual framework for insights into online consumer behavior; with a special emphasis in buzz monitoring. One of my main responsibilities is help to build qualitative, business-savvy content classifications to be used in the development of novel content analytics tools. My day-to-day tasks also involve working in practical, hands-on online market research analysis. This twofold approach allows me, and the team I work in, to come up with an innovative and yet pragmatic approach regarding what technology we are able to develop and what technical features we need to improve to meet our clients’ real needs.</i></div>
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<b>Q2: What roles do you see for text and social analyses, as part of comprehensive insight analytics, in understanding and aggregating market voices?</b><br />
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Inés Campanella: <i>Regularly listening to consumers is a task that marketers must undertake in order to know their audience, detect how people feel about them, and cater to their needs and desires. This being said, the new shopping scenario with people massively sharing their thoughts online and performing regular online research about product and brands calls for an assessment of the techniques traditionally used in market research. There are many advantages to this. In comparison with traditional quantitative techniques such as questionnaires, the collection of opinions extracted from social media sources means less intrusion since it enables the gathering of spontaneous perceptions of consumers, without introducing any apparent bias. In addition, the possibility of doing this in real time poses a clear advantage over other techniques based on retrospective data. Overall, this allows for a more efficient and complex business decision making.</i></div>
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<i>So text analysis is and will increasingly be key to market research. Nevertheless, issues such as online privacy, anonymization and the degree of representativeness and objectiveness this data holds in comparison with other methods must be taken into account. We are only beginning to understand how we can combine these approaches in a solid, law-abiding methodological toolbox.</i></div>
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<i>So text analysis is and will increasingly be key to market research. Nevertheless, issues such as online privacy, anonymization and the degree of representativeness and objectiveness this data holds in comparison with other methods must be taken into account. We are only beginning to understand how we can combine these approaches in a solid, law-abiding methodological toolbox.</i></div>
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<b>Q3: Are there particular tools or methods you favor? How do you ensure business-outcome alignment?</b><br />
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Oscar Muñoz: <i>There are many tools for measuring consumer insights in online paid and owned media that are reaching a significant degree of maturity, for instance, Programmatic Advertising and Web Analytics platforms for paid and owned respectively. However, regarding tools for performing consumer analytics in earned media, there is a long road that still lies ahead for offering results that can be easily activated in communication strategies.<br /><br />Content classification is needed to enable meaningful KPIs (key performance indicators). At Havas Media, we are working on sentiment KPIs that go beyond polarity identification (e.g., classification of emotions expressed by users towards brands and products), on consumer communities research studies via big graph analysis techniques, and on measuring the influence of ad campaigns over word-of-mouth through the analysis of correlations between advertising spent, spots’ audience, and social buzz.</i><i><br /></i><i>Content classification is needed to enable meaningful KPIs (key performance indicators). At Havas Media, we are working on sentiment KPIs that go beyond polarity identification (e.g., classification of emotions expressed by users towards brands and products), on consumer communities research studies via big graph analysis techniques, and on measuring the influence of ad campaigns over word-of-mouth through the analysis of correlations between advertising spent, spots’ audience, and social buzz.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q4: A number of industry analysts and solution providers talk about omni-channel analytics and unified customer experience. Do you have any thoughts to share on working across the variety of interaction channels?</b><br />
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Inés Campanella: <i>We live in a digitalized world and this means that we no longer find consumers in one location, environment or channel but, rather, in an ever-increasing variety of them. Traditional customer journeys are no longer valid and, thus, new strategies to engage with consumers — and avoid looking redundant to their eyes — are very much needed.<br /><br />We have witnessed that, while companies struggle to connect their marketing strategies, they often lack a tool-supported holistic approach that ensures effective multi-channel and multi-device media strategies. Our ultimate goal at Havas Media is to integrate all data sources in order to track consumers across online and offline touch points, gathering information about them with the aim of performing real time automation of communication processes. An example: serving personalized, timely online ads, push messages, and e-mail recommendations. This is completely indispensable if we wish to address consumers in an effective way.</i><i><br /></i><i>We have witnessed that, while companies struggle to connect their marketing strategies, they often lack a tool-supported holistic approach that ensures effective multi-channel and multi-device media strategies. Our ultimate goal at Havas Media is to integrate all data sources in order to track consumers across online and offline touch points, gathering information about them with the aim of performing real time automation of communication processes. An example: serving personalized, timely online ads, push messages, and e-mail recommendations. This is completely indispensable if we wish to address consumers in an effective way.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q5: To what extent does your work involve sentiment and subjective information?</b><br />
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Inés Campanella: <i>To a very large extent. Either when I’m directly dealing with data from social media listening projects or when we’re devising new business coding frames, we’re always trying to elucidate ways to leverage this source of subjective information and make it actionable.<br /><br />On the other hand, carrying out accurate [sentiment] polarity analysis is essential, but we believe it is equally important to achieve a good classification and detection of recurrent conversation topics between users (e.g., regarding product features). Our deployment of content analytics tries to give answer to all these questions. Otherwise, we would be missing half the story.</i><i><br /></i><i>On the other hand, carrying out accurate [sentiment] polarity analysis is essential, but we believe it is equally important to achieve a good classification and detection of recurrent conversation topics between users (e.g., regarding product features). Our deployment of content analytics tries to give answer to all these questions. Otherwise, we would be missing half the story.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q6: How do you recommend dealing with high-volume, high-velocity, diverse data — to ensure that analyses draw on the most complete and relevant data available and deliver the most accurate results possible?</b><br />
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Oscar Muñoz: <i>We deal with volume and velocity by leveraging Big Data processing platforms like Hadoop and the related ecosystem (e.g., HBASE, HIVE, Spark, etc.). To tackle diverse data, we spent a significant part of our computing resources on ETL (extract, transform, load) processes for normalizing, integrating, aggregating, and summarizing data from multiple social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, etc.) according to a unique schema of linked data about content, users, and related metadata.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>Regarding accuracy, our goal is to develop natural language processing (NLP) algorithms that are as precise as possible, to obtain confidence levels similar to other techniques like opinion polls. Unfortunately, this goal cannot be achieved easily. We combine machine learning and deep linguistic analysis techniques in order to find fair balances of precision and recall, but there is still a lot of work to be done.</i><i><br /></i><i>Regarding accuracy, our goal is to develop natural language processing (NLP) algorithms that are as precise as possible, to obtain confidence levels similar to other techniques like opinion polls. Unfortunately, this goal cannot be achieved easily. We combine machine learning and deep linguistic analysis techniques in order to find fair balances of precision and recall, but there is still a lot of work to be done.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q7: Could you provide an example (or two) that illustrates really well what your organization and clients have been able to accomplish via analytics that demonstrate strong ROI?</b><br />
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Inés Campanella: <i>We’ve developed business indicators that allow us to better code and interpret social media listening data, namely marketing mix indicators and consumer decision journey stages. Ultimately, this has a very positive impact on ROI. Let me explain this in greater detail.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>To monitor in real time and accordingly react to the experiences that customers are sharing, our clients must know the purchase stages in which those consumers are gained and lost, in order to refine touch points, impact consumers at the right time, and achieve the desired result (that is, a transaction). Also, uncovering the exact content of the dialogues that customers are having lets marketers and advertisers keep better track of consumers’ mindsets. We’ve found that the combination of these two categories provides very valuable information for a better positioning of the brand or organization in the market and, therefore, for an improved return on advertising efforts.</i><i><br /></i><i>To monitor in real time and accordingly react to the experiences that customers are sharing, our clients must know the purchase stages in which those consumers are gained and lost, in order to refine touch points, impact consumers at the right time, and achieve the desired result (that is, a transaction). Also, uncovering the exact content of the dialogues that customers are having lets marketers and advertisers keep better track of consumers’ mindsets. We’ve found that the combination of these two categories provides very valuable information for a better positioning of the brand or organization in the market and, therefore, for an improved return on advertising efforts.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q8: I’m glad you’ll be speaking at <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a>. Your talk is titled “Understand Consumers: Mindset, Intentions, and Needs.” Would you please describe your presentation briefly: What will attendees learn?</b></div>
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Inés Campanella: <i>I’m also glad I’ll take part in LT-Accelerate. I will introduce the audience to Havas Media Group current needs, challenges, and practices regarding content analytics. Specifically, I’ll comment on the research we have carried out regarding innovative classification of user generated content (UGC) to improve social media buzz monitoring. In short, I’ll explain the business need for these kinds of classifier and how we can leverage and combine them with other market techniques and insights to improve our understanding of consumers’ mindsets and habits.</i></blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #4d469c; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 0px; background: transparent; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border: 1px solid transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-align: start;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-align: start;">This Interview has been done by </span><a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/seth-grimes" style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mr. Seth Grimes</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-align: start;">, the leading industry analyst covering text analytics, sentiment analysis, and analysis on the confluence of structured and unstructured data sources and founder of Alta Plana Corp.</span></span><br />
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-24870679144356487402014-11-18T16:46:00.000+01:002014-11-18T16:53:52.703+01:00From Social Sources to Customer Value: Synthesio’s Approach<br />
<a href="https://breakthroughanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/pedrocardoso1.jpg?w=261&h=256" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://breakthroughanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/pedrocardoso1.jpg?w=261&h=256" width="200" /></a>Text analytics is an enabling technology for deep social media understanding. We apply natural language processing (NLP) and data analysis and visualization techniques in an effort to make sense of the diversity of social postings. The social intelligence that results advances customer engagement and informs efforts to meet marketing, customer experience, product management, and reputation management needs.<br />
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I interviewed Pedro Cardoso of social intelligence leader <a href="http://synthesio.com/">Synthesio</a> as part of preparation for December’s <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate conference</a>. Pedro will be speaking on language morphology (forms) in sentiment analysis. That’s a fairly technical topic, reflecting Pedro’s role as text analytics director at Synthesio, but one that will help business attendees understand the ins-and-outs of attitudes, opinions, and emotions in social and other text sources.<br />
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Pedro’s background: He earned an engineering degree in electronics and control systems and a masters in speech processing. His career path started in Portugal, as a research engineer, followed by 4 years in Japan and 5 years in France. For the majority of this time, he worked on speech processing, mostly relying on machine learning for acoustic and language modeling. For the last 2 years, Pedro has been working on natural language processing at Synthesio in Paris.<br />
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<h2>
Our interview with Pedro Cardoso</h2>
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<b>Q1: The topic of this Q&A is social media analytics. What’s your personal SMA background and your current work role?</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pedro Cardoso: <i>My background is in machine learning applied to language technology. I started in development of speech recognition systems — language and acoustic statistical models. The focus was not on social media analysis (SMA), even if over the years I did some call-center development, including tests on sentiment analysis in voice. Over the last two and half years, ever since I joined Synthesio, I have been working full-time on SMA. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Currently I am responsible for NLP and text analytics development at Synthesio. Our objective is to create algorithms that help process and analyse social data collected by Synthesio, so that it can easily understood and exploited by our customers. This work includes data visualisation, document topic classification, and sentiment analysis.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q2: What are key technical and business goals of the analyses you’re involved in?</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pedro Cardoso:<i> Business drives technology, and customers needs drive business. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>As mentioned above, our objective in the text analytics group is to find ways to structure and present information from social media sources in a simple way that customers can understand and get value from it. Our focus is on text. We classify and summarize it with the goal of obtaining meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) from large quantities of data, which would be impossible without technology. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>We also develop methods for detecting key influencers and deriving demographic information. This allows our customers to focus their searches on particular groups of social media users.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q3: And what particular analytics approaches or technologies do you favor, whether for text, network, geospatial, behavioral, or other analyses?</b><br />
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Pedro Cardoso: <i>If we focus on my work, I favor text and also study of network connections between online users. But if the question is what I believe to be the best technologies for SMA, that would have to be text also. Text is the medium, it is what customers use for communication. Network, geospatial, and other analytics are important, but mainly to focus our listening on a specific group. In the end, it is text, what SM users say, that counts. </i></blockquote>
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<i>Recently there has been interest on image analysis. People share more and more pictures. Sharing the picture of a brand logo or a product carries a strong brand loyalty message. Still, we need better image processing techniques and to learn how to best use information from images, in particular how it combines with text, in case of comments. </i></blockquote>
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<i>Social media allows us to focus on particular customers and groups, it allows us to have more personalized communications. In these cases, technologies such as demographic analysis and group detection gain favor, but discussing further, we would be getting off-topic.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q4: To what extent do you get into sentiment and subjective information?</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pedro Cardoso: <i>Automatic sentiment analysis is a great part of what I do as text analytics director. Our team is responsible for the development of automatic sentiment analysis at Synthesio, and has developed internally current support for 15 languages offered as part of the product. </i></blockquote>
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<i>Subjectivity is a very complicated subject, and one that I believe no one has managed to solve. To understand subjectivity, you need first to understand well the user and the context in which a message was written. After all, the real meaning is in the person’s mind. We are still not there, and it might take a long while to get there.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q5: How do you recommend dealing with high-volume, high-velocity, diverse social postings — to ensure that analyses draw on the most complete and relevant data available and deliver the most accurate results possible?</b><br />
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Pedro Cardoso: <i>We have developed data crawlers that ensure we can capture, enrich and standardize data from different sources worldwide should they come from largest social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Sina Weibo, VKontakte, etc.), mainstream media sources, and blogs or forums (thanks to a dedicated sourcing team of 5 people). This approach allows us to deal with several million social mentions each day and to provide for each of them a sentiment assessment, a global influence ranking (proprietary algorithm), and potential reach (another proprietary algorithm), on an ongoing basis and in near real time. It takes less than 2 minutes for a data to be crawled, parsed, enriched and pushed into client interfaces. Once structured with both metadata and enriched data, our clients can then access their dashboard. They can either work on global data volumes for main KPI tracking and trend analysis and/or on focused subsamples for deeper human qualitative analysis.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q6: Could you provide an example (or two) that illustrates really well what Sythesio’s customers been able to accomplish via SMA, that demonstrate strong ROI?</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pedro Cardoso: <i>Sure. One of our clients in the automotive industry has achieved, through deep analysis of first-customer feedback in European forums, identification of key barriers when it comes to acquiring an electric car. Based on the lessons, they had the ability to create a far more efficient digital and social media campaign. ROI was there for reducing costs before the campaign both in terms of message crafting and media planning. ROI was there after the campaign, which drove far more traffic to the Web site, and to dealerships for test drives, than previous efforts. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Another example we can give is a telco company that uses Synthesio for both listening and engaging directly with its clients on social networks, regarding client questions and complaints. By defining a precise listening scope and by clustering, combined with precise workflows for answer validation and publication, the client was able to measure ROI based on average answer time for any given question. By socializing answers to most frequent topics they also built up a C to C advice platform, which allows top users to directly address other customers questions. ROI is also achieved via fewer inbound calls to the call center.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q7: Do you have recommendations to share, regarding choice of data sources, metrics, analytical methods, and visualizations, in order to best align with desired business outcome?</b><br />
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Pedro Cardoso: <i>At Synthesio we hold two key principles when it comes to social data and metrics. </i></blockquote>
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<ul>
<li><i>We believe social analytics and intelligence have to be global. We have sources covering more than 200 countries, networks crawled natively in more than 50 languages, etc. </i></li>
</ul>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li><i>And they have to be simple. We built business oriented metrics, comparable KPIs, and customizable interfaces to make sure that every single client within a company (from PR to marketing, from CRM to sales) can access the right data at the right moment.</i></li>
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<i>Furthermore we know that social analytics can’t be envisaged as another data silo. That’s why we pay so much attention to openness and interconnections with other digital marketing tools (such as consumer review platforms like Bazaarvoice, owned communities platforms like Lithium, social marketing platforms like Spredfast, etc.), CRM (<a href="http://salesforce.com/">Salesforce.com</a>, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.), or BI (IBM, etc.) tools used by our clients. Our open API helps them to both push data to such tools but also integrate data from other sources to get a 360° view of customer feedback, for instance. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Last recommendation we would like to share is “Don’t get too focused on data: Next step is people.” To better measure ROI, our clients have to go back to where it all began: Business is conducted by people and not by a data set. Being customer centric for better targeting, better personalization of messages, and better understanding of the brand relationship is what guides all of our present and future developments. Even though our roadmap is our best kept secret, be prepared to see more demographic profiling, audience targeting tools, and sales oriented measurement and anticipation metrics.</i></blockquote>
<b>Q8: I’m glad you’ll be speaking at LT-Accelerate. Your topic is fairly technical — exploiting languages’ morphology for automatic sentiment analysis — noting that we do have a range of presentations on the program. Would you please tell me about your presentation, briefly: What attendees will learn.</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pedro Cardoso: <i>The first thing we need to understand is the definition of morphology. Morphology of a word defines its structure: the root, part-of-speech, gender, conjugation, etc. And this is the first giveaway of the presentation. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Continuing, I will show how the use of morphological information of words helped us at Synthesio in building sentiment analysis, in particular for less represented languages, those that offer less labeled [training] data. Also, it is an important part of the system for agglutinative languages, whose vocabulary is theoretically close to infinite.</i></blockquote>
That wraps up this interview. I’m looking forward to Pedro Cardoso’s <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a> presentation. If you’re intrigued by what you read here, please do visit the conference Web site to learn more. And I hope you’ll join us 4-5 December 2014 in Brussels.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
This Interview has been done by <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/seth-grimes">Mr. Seth Grimes</a>, the leading industry analyst covering text analytics, sentiment analysis, and analysis on the confluence of structured and unstructured data sources and founder of Alta Plana Corp.<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-31483251454850347512014-11-17T12:25:00.000+01:002014-11-17T12:36:05.775+01:00The Voice of the Customer × 650 Million/Year at Sony Mobile<a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img height="200" src="https://breakthroughanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/ollehagelin.jpg?w=205&h=300" width="137" /></a><br />
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We understand that customer feedback can make or break a consumer-facing business. That feedback — whether unsolicited, social-posted opinions, or gained during support interactions, or collected via surveys — captures valuable information about product and service quality issues. Automated analysis is essential. Given data volume and velocity, and the diversity of feedback sources and languages that a global enterprise must deal with, there is no other way to effectively produce insights.</div>
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Olle started in the mobile phone business 1993 as a production engineer. He has held many roles as a project and quality manager. He was responsible for the Ericsson Mobile development process and for quality at a company level. Olle is currently quality manager in the Quality & Customer Service organization at Sony Mobile Corporation. Olle is responsible for handling feedback from the field.Consumer and market analytics — and supporting social, text, speech, and sentiment analysis techniques — are subject matter for the <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate conference</a>, taking place December 4-5, 2014 in Brussels. We’re very happy that we were able to recruit Olle Hagelin from Sony Mobile as a speaker.</div>
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<h2 style="text-align: justify;">
Our interview with Olle Hagelin</h2>
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<b>Q1: The topic of this Q&A is consumer and market insight. What’s your personal background and your current work role, as they relate to these domains?</b></div>
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Olle Hagelin: <i>My responsibility is to look into all customer interactions to determine Sony Mobile’s biggest issues from the customer’s point of view. We handle around 650 million interactions per year.</i></div>
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<b>Q2: What roles do you see for text and social analyses, as part of comprehensive insight analytics, in understanding and aggregating market voices?</b></div>
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Olle Hagelin: <i>I think text and social analyses can replace most of what is done today. </i></div>
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<i>Everyone’s customer will sooner or later express what they want on the Net. And opinions won’t be colored by your questions. You just put your ear to the ground and listen. You probably want to ask questions too but that will be to get details, to fine tune — not to understand the picture, only to understand what particular shade of green the customer is seeing out of 3,500 shades of green.</i></div>
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<b>Q3: Are there particular tools or methods you favor? How do you ensure business-outcome alignment?</b></div>
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Olle Hagelin: <i>You will always prefer the tool you use/can. For our purposes what we get from <a href="http://confirmit.com/">Confirmit</a> and the tool Genius is perfect. But again it is to find issues, to mine text to find issues and understand sentiment of issues. If you are a marketing person it may be that other tools that are better.</i></div>
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<i>Business-outcome alignment is a big statement and I don’t try to achieve that. If it comes, nice, but my aim is only to understand customer issues and to ensure that they are fixed as soon as possible. And I suppose the in-the-end result is business-outcome alignment?</i></div>
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<b>Q4: A number of industry analysts and solution providers talk about omni-channel analytics and unified customer experience. Do you have any thoughts to share on working across the variety of interaction channels?</b></div>
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Olle Hagelin: <i>Yes. Do it. I do. Sorry. Politically correct: Sony Mobile does and has since 2010. All repairs, all contact center interactions, and as much social as possible. As said above, we handle around 650 million interactions per year.</i></div>
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<b>Q5: To what extent does your work involve sentiment and subjective information?</b></div>
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Olle Hagelin: <i>A lot although it could be more. Especially to determine which issues hurt the customer most. Identifying the biggest, most costly issues etc. is easy, but to add on pain-point discovery would be good. </i></div>
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<i>Sentiment/subjective analyses are used frequently to look into specific areas but not as part of the standard daily deliverable. Hopefully everyday will be in place in a year or two.</i></div>
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<b>Q6: How do you recommend dealing with high-volume, high-velocity, diverse data — to ensure that analyses draw on the most complete and relevant data available and deliver the most accurate results possible?</b></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Olle Hagelin: <i>This can be discussed for days. But in short: Look at what you have and start from that. Build up piece-by-piece. Don’t attempt a big do-it-all system because it will never work and always be outdated. If you know only one part well — say handling either structured data or unstructured data — don’t try yourself to take a big bite of the other part, the part you don’t know well. Instead, buy help and learn slowly. </i></div>
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<i>Sony Mobile works to split the data up into structured and unstructured parts. We work with them separately to identify issues first and then compare. We know structured data well and got very good support and help with the unstructured part. After four years we can do a lot ourselves, but without support from Confirmit with the hard unchewed mass of unstructured data — Confirmit handles text in the language it is written in (no translations) — we wouldn’t be able manage. </i></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>The end result is to make it quick and easy to get to the point.</i> </div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>After working with this data many years, we now have a good understanding of what issues that will be seen in all systems and which will not.</i></div>
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<b>Q7: Could you provide an example (or two) that illustrates really well what your organization and clients have been able to accomplish via analytics, that demonstrate strong ROI?</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Olle Hagelin:<i> Two cases that we fixed quickly recently –</i></div>
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<i>First is an issue when answering a call. The call always went to speaker mood. We identified the problem and it was fixed by Google within two weeks – it was an issue in Chrome. </i></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>Another one was several years ago: A discussion about a small and in-principle invisible crack in the front of a phone stopped sales in Germany. After we issued a statement that the problem is covered by warranty and will be fixed within warranty coverage, sales started again. It turned out almost no one wanted a fix! As I said, you had to look for the crack to see it. </i></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>I have many more examples, but I think for daily work, the possibility of quick-checking social to see whether an issue has spread or not has been the most valuable contributor. And that ability keeps head count down.</i></div>
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<b>Q8: You’ll be presenting at <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a>. What will you be covering?</b></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Olle Hagelin: <i>I’ll show how Sony Mobile uses social and also text mining of CRM data to quickly identify issues, and how we get an understanding of how big they are with complementing structured data. </i></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Added to this, the verbatim from customers can be used as feedback to engineers so they can reproduce issues in order to fix them.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" /></a><br />
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This Interview has been done by <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/seth-grimes">Mr. Seth Grimes</a>, the leading industry analyst covering text analytics, sentiment analysis, and analysis on the confluence of structured and unstructured data sources and founder of Alta Plana Corp.</div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-45461409982241269932014-11-14T16:09:00.000+01:002014-11-19T12:23:00.102+01:00Social Media Analytics Innovation: Q&A with Shree Dandekar, Dell<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
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<img height="183" src="https://breakthroughanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/shreedandekar.jpg?w=830" width="200" />
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It’s common to talk of the “customer journey,” of the path an individual takes from needs awareness, via research and evaluation, to purchase and, in the case of a happy customer, loyalty and a lasting relationship. The customer journey may involve multiple channels and touchpoints.</div>
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Social touchpoints are among the most important, at every stage of the customer journey. We explore them in this interview with Shree Dandekar, general manager for social analytics at Dell and a speaker at the <a href="http://www.lt-accelerate.com/" target="_blank">LT-Accelerate</a> conference, December 4-5, 2014 in Brussels.</div>
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The ability to understand, measure, and shape social influence and advocacy is hugely important. You need software to do the job right, software that automates collection, filtering, and analysis of social and online text in conjunction with network and market analytics. Techniques are rapidly evolving, making social media analytics innovation a topic of great interest for brands and agencies across industry.</div>
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The social business challenge and technical responses are central topics at LT-Accelerate. I’m very much looking forward to <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/shree-dandekar">Shree’s presentation, about tools and techniques for social ROI</a>. If this topic interests you as well, you’ll want to learn more. An interview I recently conducted with Shree is a start, then I hope you’ll join us in Brussels.</div>
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Shree has been at Dell for 14 years, in roles covering software design, product development, enterprise marketing and technology strategy. He is responsible for developing and driving the strategy for Dell’s predictive analytics and BI solutions.<br />
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<h2 style="text-align: justify;">
Our interview with Shree Dandekar</h2>
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<b><b>Q1: The topic of this Q&A is social media analytics. What’s your personal SMA background and your current work role?</b></b></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
Shree Dandekar: I am the GM for our social analytics offering and have been responsible for taking Dell products in this space to market.</blockquote>
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<b><b>Q2: What are key technical and business goals of the analyses you’re involved in?</b></b></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
Shree Dandekar:<i> Given that we are in the business of offering social analytics to our customers, our technical and business goals are tailored around that. Specifically, technical goals are focused on making our social analytics product robust enough to support our customers’ needs. This does include making sure we capture the right sentiment, glean the right insights, and prep the data to ensure both business and social context information can be surfaced in an efficient manner. Our business goals are to make sure our customers can realize their “social nirvana” by identifying themselves on the social analytics journey and making the right investments in moving to the next level.</i></blockquote>
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<b><b>Q3: And what particular analytics approaches or technologies do you favor, whether for text, network, geospatial, behavioral, or other analyses? [You don't have to cover all these analysis types.]</b></b></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
Shree Dandekar: <i>We use predictive analytics algorithms to derive insights from Social Media data. Dell has invested significant IP in building its text and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities and our social media analytics offerings is directly built on top of that foundation. Dell also recently acquired a leading predictive analytics player: <a href="http://www.statsoft.com/">Statistica</a>. Statistica Text Miner is an extension of Statistica Data Miner, ideal for translating unstructured text data into meaningful, valuable clusters of decision-making “gold.” As most users familiar with text mining already know, real-world data comes in a variety of forms, not always organized or easily ready to analyze. Text mining digs for the underlying information not readily apparent in traditional structured data. These data sources can be extremely large as well. Statistica Text Miner is optimized and has recently been further enhanced for working with such data.</i></blockquote>
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<b><b>Q4: To what extent do you get into sentiment and subjective information?</b></b></div>
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Shree Dandekar: <i>Dell joined forces with a leading text analytics provider to leverage sentiment and text analytics. Their patented NLP engine uses a mix of rules and dictionaries to break down and analyze customer feedback text, and to score it on an 11-point sentiment scale for added granularity and measurement. The sentiment and text analytics solution enables Dell to make sense of the vast amount of customer feedback data available. In order to make the insights relevant to Dell’s business and understand brand health through the voice of the customer, the social analytics team developed a proprietary metric, the SNA metric. This metric is an indicator of purchase intent, giving Dell a clear view into customer advocacy of the Dell brand. Once the social media data is collected, analyzed, and scored for sentiment, it is then scored against Dell’s SNA scale.</i></blockquote>
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<b><b>Q5: How do you recommend dealing with high-volume, high-velocity, diverse social postings — to ensure that analyses draw on the most complete and relevant data available and deliver the most accurate results possible?</b></b></div>
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Shree Dandekar: <i>Dell is using this patent-pending software (SNA) and integrating it into all aspects of the business from product development, marketing, Net Promoter Score (NPS) diagnosis, customer support/service, sales, and M&A. Measuring more than 1.5 million conversations annually, the system provides the ability to drill down to very granular parts of the business in real time. It serves as a source of uniform distribution and assimilation of customer feedback for multiple business functions. This enhances Dell’s avowed policy of customer centricity and direct feedback. And, since it updates in real-time, SNA accelerates customer feedback on important topics enabling shorter response cycles without negatively affecting the brand health.</i></blockquote>
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<b><b>Q6: Could you provide an example (or two) that illustrates really well what you’ve been able to accomplish via SMA, that demonstrate strong ROI?</b></b></div>
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Shree Dandekar: <i>The Dell social media analytics portfolio includes the patent-pending Social Net Advocacy (SNA) metric. SNA is designed to measure the net advocacy of a brand or topic, calculated from the sentiment and context of social media conversations (see figure). Dell uses SNA internally to help the company deliver an enhanced experience to its customers. SNA is integrated within the Dell Social Media Command Center, which enables the company to monitor and react to online conversations in real time.</i> </div>
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<i><i>Dell measures SNA at the brand level and also extends this measurement to more than 150 topics representing various aspects of the business. Online conversations are analyzed for topics including products, services, marketing, customer support, packaging and even community outreach efforts. Each of these conversations influences brand perception and therefore affects the overall advocacy or health of the brand. SNA enables organizations to understand, quantify and contextualize online feedback, leading to informed business decisions that help improve the overall customer experience. Organizations can integrate customer feedback in near-real time for short response cycles — meaning that an organization can quickly connect with a customer and discuss relevant solutions.</i></i></div>
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<i>The customer feedback derived from the SNA program is delivered across the entire organization, from departments such as customer care and quality control to marketing and product development. The real time analysis and measuring of social data has allowed Dell to proactively quell any public concerns before they grow into potentially larger issues. Moreover, Dell is able to add context to the sentiment and SNA scores such as understanding whether the customer is a brand advocate or not.</i> </div>
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<i><i>For example, within hours after the launch of a specific Dell product, the social analytics team saw a declining trend in SNA (decreased by more than 50%). When the analyst team looked further into the issue, they found a significant number of social media conversations expressing anger over the pricing for the new product. They turned to Dell’s chief blogger who quickly wrote a post explaining the situation and rectifying the price concerns. Within one day, Dell was able to return to original sentiment levels. Moreover, the general manager didn’t even need to be brought into the issue- employees are empowered to make quick and informed decisions.</i></i></div>
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<b><b>Q7: Finally, do you have recommendations to share, regarding choice of data sources, metrics, analytical methods, and visualizations, in order to best align with desired business outcome?</b></b></div>
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Shree Dandekar: <i>With the explosive growth of social media, customers are increasingly taking their conversations to online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, community forums, wikis and blogs. Because social media has the power to influence brand reputation, daily engagement with people who are discussing an organization’s brand has become a critical step for understanding the market — and in some cases, converting detractors into brand advocates.</i> </div>
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<i><i>Through social media analytics, organizations can determine who is doing the talking: Are they customers, influencers or others? They can find out when specific events caused positive or negative conversations and also measure general brand sentiment on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. This rich data enables enterprises to obtain real-time customer insights that can help solve complex business challenges.</i></i> </div>
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<i><i>The development of a social media analytics strategy can be thought of as a journey that begins by listening to online conversations. The next steps are to collect, record and analyze the data, and then monitor trends. Finally, heuristics and business algorithms are applied to the data to derive actionable insights. This journey from an ad hoc approach to a highly optimized solution does not happen overnight but in increments, as an enterprise develops analytics maturity. To achieve this maturity, business leaders need to make the right investments in technology, and then invest in training people and creating a social media analytics culture within the organization.</i></i> </div>
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<i><i>Through social media analytics, organizations can determine who is doing the talking: Are they customers, influencers or others? They can find out when specific events caused positive or negative conversations and also measure general brand sentiment on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. This rich data enables enterprises to obtain real-time customer insights that can help solve complex business challenges.</i></i> </div>
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<i><i>The development of a social media analytics strategy can be thought of as a journey that begins by listening to online conversations. The next steps are to collect, record and analyze the data, and then monitor trends. Finally, heuristics and business algorithms are applied to the data to derive actionable insights. This journey from an ad hoc approach to a highly optimized solution does not happen overnight but in increments, as an enterprise develops analytics maturity. To achieve this maturity, business leaders need to make the right investments in technology, and then invest in training people and creating a social media analytics culture within the organization.</i></i></div>
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Thanks, Shree. Readers, if you’re intrigued by Shree’s take on social media analytics, please check out the <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/programme">LT-Accelerate program</a> and consider joining us in Brussels!</div>
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<br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-align: start;" /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-align: start;">This Interview has been done by </span><a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/seth-grimes" style="background-color: white; color: #4d469c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mr. Seth Grimes</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-align: start;">, the leading industry analyst covering text analytics, sentiment analysis, and analysis on the confluence of structured and unstructured data sources and founder of Alta Plana Corp.</span></div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-64433163454325916102014-11-13T14:07:00.000+01:002014-11-13T14:09:20.411+01:00Consumer & Market Analytics: Q&A with Lauren Azulay, Confirmit
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<span style="text-align: justify;">Our thesis: Language technologies — text, speech, and social analytics — natural language processing and semantic analysis — are the key to understanding consumer, market, and public voices. Apply them to extract the full measure of business value from social and online media, customer interactions and other enterprise data, scientific and financial information, and a spectrum of other sources. The insight you’ll gain means competitive edge, whatever your organization’s mission.</span><br />
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Insight, via business (and research and government) application of language technologies, is the central topic for <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a>, a new conference that takes place December 4-5 in Brussels.</div>
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I recently interviewed a number of LT-Accelerate speakers. My questions broadly cover the topics they’ll be addressing in their conference presentations. This article relays my Q&A with speaker Lauren Azulay of <a href="https://www.confirmit.com/" style="font-weight: bold;">Confirmit</a>, a customer, employee, and market insights solution provider.</div>
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Our interview with Lauren Azulay</h2>
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<b><b>Q1: The topic of this Q&A is consumer and market insight. What’s your personal background and your current work role, as they relate to these domains?</b></b></div>
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Lauren Azulay:<i> My current role is Senior Product Manager for Text and Social Analytics at Confirmit, where consumer and market insight is at the heart of what we do. Text Analytics gives insight into the voice of the customer and the social analytics provides insight into the voice of the market. Previously, I was the Product Manager of the Channel and Brand insights platform for YouTube multi-channel network, Base79, where we discovered and uncovered meaningful patterns in data for brands and channels wanting to increase their exposure on YouTube. Before that I spent 7 years as Head of Product and then Head of Internationalisation and Billing on a social networking product, where consumer and market insight drove our new product development and launch in new territories.</i></blockquote>
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<b><b>Q2: What roles do you see for text and social analyses, as part of comprehensive insight analytics, in understanding and aggregating market voices?</b></b></div>
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Lauren Azulay: <i>The voice of the market includes your competitors, independent analysts and commentators, or just consumers who may or may not be your customers. Understanding the buzz and sentiment around key topics or issues across all these voices can help marketing, sales, services and product functions within a business. Social analysis is also good for early issue detection which can protect you from brand damage, reduce service costs and improve customer satisfaction.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q3: Are there particular tools or methods you favor? How do you ensure business-outcome alignment?</b></div>
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Lauren Azulay: <i>Extracting social insights requires capturing not just the text but all of the metadata associated with each post or comment, such as the conversation data, author, etc. Because of the large volumes, statistical techniques are better than rules-based approaches to categorization and sentiment analysis, as they can process very large volumes of text much faster.</i><i><br /></i><i>The right visualisations are important for bringing the data to life, and the ability to correlate the social insights with other business and customer data has the potential to offer significant value.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q4: A number of industry analysts and solution providers talk about omni-channel analytics and unified customer experience. Do you have any thoughts to share on working across the variety of interaction channels?</b></div>
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Lauren Azulay: <i>A centralised customer hub is essential. In the end, the solution will most likely be a hybrid combination of different technologies, as storing and managing social data is a different technical problem to solve than storing transactional data. So it’s important for any hub solution to easily integrate with other customer or data hubs within an organisation, and each one can be targeted at the problem it is best suited to solve. This is the only way businesses will be able to achieve the holy grail of a truly unified customer experience across all channels, including social.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q5: To what extent does your work involve sentiment and subjective information?</b></div>
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Lauren Azulay: <i>We have many customers that have deployed sentiment analysis for text from both voice of the customer data and social media data. For example, Sony Mobile have been using social media to detect consumer issues as they come up in order to improve their products and services, protect their brand and to avoid costs.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q6: How do you recommend dealing with high-volume, high-velocity, diverse data — to ensure that analyses draw on the most complete and relevant data available and deliver the most accurate results possible?</b></div>
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Lauren Azulay: <i>The key to analysis is to understand the data sources and how they all fit together for your business and your market. In order to deal with large volumes of diverse data, such as social data, you need to know your objectives and be very focused on the project goal. This drives the data sources you analyse and the categorisation model you apply. The data structure is also important, as mentioned before, so that you make sure that all relevant metadata is stored along with the text. Categorisation of all texts can be performed very quickly using Boolean search techniques. Knowing the volume of interactions by category gives you the buzz, which can then be tracked over time and can quickly highlight trending topics.</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>However, performing sentiment analysis on all the data captured is not practical, even with a high-performing statistically-based sentiment algorithm. Statistical sampling, performed correctly, can ensure an accurate sentiment and can be obtained by category, even if there are thousands or millions of text strings within each category. Research we have conducted shows that a collection of a million documents can be analysed in a very short time using a sample of 20,000 documents, with a high degree of accuracy.</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>In addition, with the right analytical tools and the right visualisations, humans can interpret the results and explore the root causes for specific topics. Human analysis is very important in pulling it all together and drawing the overall conclusions.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q7: Could you provide an example (or two) that illustrates really well what your organization and clients have been able to accomplish via analytics that demonstrate strong ROI?</b></div>
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Lauren Azulay:<i> Sony Mobile, through their social media ‘listening’ service, uncovered more than 15,000 unique issue reports in a year. This gave them the ability to prioritise the 3 main issue categories and focus on a process of remediation. This has saved the company tens of thousands of dollars and improved customer satisfaction, which has been measured through social media.</i></blockquote>
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<b>Q8: You’ll be presenting a lighting talk at LT-Accelerate. What will you be covering?</b></div>
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Lauren Azulay: <i>Social analytics in action!</i></blockquote>
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Thanks Lauren. Readers, if what you’ve read here sounds interesting, <b>please do visit the <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/">LT-Accelerate</a> Web site</b> to learn more about the conference. We’ve designed the conference as a venue for learning, networking, and opportunity, for technologists and business users alike.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" /></a><br />
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This Interview has been done by <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/seth-grimes">Mr. Seth Grimes</a>, the leading industry analyst covering text analytics, sentiment analysis, and analysis on the confluence of structured and unstructured data sources and founder of Alta Plana Corp.</div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-55206156258017019172014-11-12T15:14:00.001+01:002014-11-12T15:18:45.400+01:00The Analytics of Digital Transformation, per Tata Consultancy Services<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Next month’s <b><a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/" target="_blank">LT-Accelerate conference</a></b> will be the third occasion I’ve invited <b>Lipika Dey</b> to speak at a conference I’ve organized. She’s that interesting a speaker. One talk was on Goal-driven Sentiment Analysis, a second on Fusing Sentiment and BI to Obtain Customer/Retail Insight. (You’ll find video of the latter talk embedded at the end of this article.) Next month, at LT-Accelerate in Brussels, she’ll be speaking on a particular topic that’s actually of quite broad concern, <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/lipika-dey" target="_blank">E-mail Analytics for Customer Support Centres</a>.</div>
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As part of the conference lead-up, I interviewed Lipika regarding consumer and market analytics, and — given her research and consulting background — techniques that best extract practical, usable insights from text and social data. What follows are a brief bio and then the full text of our exchange.</div>
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<b>Dr. Lipika Dey</b> is a senior consultant and principal scientist at <b>Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)</b>, India with over 20 years of experience in academic and industrial R&D. Her research interests are in content analytics from social media and news, social network analytics, predictive modeling, sentiment analysis and opinion mining, and semantic search of enterprise content. She is keenly interested in developing analytical frameworks for integrated analysis of unstructured and structured data.</div>
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Lipika was formerly a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, from 1995 to 2006. She has published in international journals and refereed conference proceedings. Lipika has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, M.Tech in Computer Science and Data Processing, and 5 Year Integrated M.Sc in Mathematics from IIT Kharagpur.</div>
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Our interview with Lipika Dey –</h2>
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<b>Q1: The topic of this Q&A is consumer and market insight. What’s your personal background and your current work role, as they relate to these domains?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>I head the research sub-area of Web Intelligence and Text Mining at Innovation Labs, Delhi of Tata Consultancy Services. Throughout my academic and a research career, I have worked in the areas of data mining, text mining and information retrieval. My current interests are focused towards seamless integration of business intelligence and multi-structured predictive analytics that can reliably and gainfully use information from multitude of sources for business insights and strategic planning.</i></div>
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<b>Q2: What roles do you see for text and social analyses, as part of comprehensive insight analytics, in understanding and aggregating market voices?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>The role of text in insight analytics can be hardly over-emphasized.</i></div>
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<i>Digital transformation has shifted control of the consumer world to consumers from providers. Consumers — both actual and potential — are demanding, buying, reviewing, criticising, influencing others, and thereby controlling the market. The decreasing cost of smart gadgets is ensuring that all this is not just for the elite and tech-savvy. Ease of communicating in local languages on these gadgets is also a contributing factor to the increased user base and increased content generation.</i></div>
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<i>News channels and other traditional information sources have also adopted social media for information dissemination, thereby paving the way for study of people’s reactions to policies and regulations.</i></div>
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<i>With so much expressed and exchanged all over the world, it is hard to ignore content and interaction data to gather insights.</i></div>
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<b>Q3: Are there particular tools or methods you favor? How do you ensure business-outcome alignment?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>My personal favourites for text analytics are statistical methods and imprecise reasoning techniques used in conjunction with domain and business ontologies for interpretation and insight generation. Statistical methods are language agnostic and ideal for handling noisy text. Text inherently is not amenable to be used within a crisp reasoning framework. Hence use of imprecise representation and reasoning methodologies based on fuzzy sets or rough sets is ideal for reasoning with text inputs.</i></div>
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<i>The most crucial aspect for text analytics based applications is interpretation of results and insight generation. I strongly believe in interactive analytics platforms that can aid a human analyst comprehend and validate the results. Ability to create and modify business ontology with ease and view the content or results from different perspectives is also crucial for successful adoption of a text analytics based application. Business intelligence is far too entrenched in dashboard-driven analytics at the moment. It is difficult to switch the mind-set of a whole group at once. Thus text analytics at this moment is simply used as a way to structure the content to generate numbers for some pre-defined parameters. A large volume of information which could be potentially used is therefore ignored. One possible way to practically enrich business intelligence with information gathered from text is to choose “analytics as a service” rather than look for a tool.</i></div>
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<i>As a researcher I find this the most exciting phase in the history of text analytics. I see a lot of potential in the yet unused aspects of text for insight generation. We are at the confluence where surface level analytics has seen a fair degree of success. The challenge now is to dive below the surface and understand intentions, attitudes, influences, etc. from stand-alone or communications text. Dealing with ever-evolving language patterns that are also in turn influenced by the underlying gadgets through which content is generated just adds to the complexity.</i></div>
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<b>Q4: A number of industry analysts and solution providers talk about omni-channel analytics and unified customer experience. Do you have any thoughts to share on working across the variety of interaction channels?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>Yes, we see many business organizations actively moving towards unified customer experience. Omni-channel analytics is catching up. But truly speaking I think at this point of time it is an aspirational capabilty. A lot of information is being pushed. Some of it is contextual. But I am not sure whether the industry is still in a position to measure its effectiveness or for that matter use it to its full potential.</i></div>
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<i>It is true that a multitude of sources help in generating a more comprehensive view of a consumer, both as an individual as well as a social being. Interestingly, as data is growing bigger and bigger, technology is enabling organizations to focus on smaller and smaller groups, almost to the point of catering to individuals.</i></div>
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<i>As a researcher I see exciting possibilities to work in new directions. My personal view is that the success of omni-channel analytics will depend on the capability of data scientists to amalgamate domain knowledge and business knowledge with loads and loads of information gathered about socio-cultural, demographic, psychological and behavioural factors of target customers. Traditional mining tools and technologies will play a big role, but I envisage an even greater role for reasoning platforms which will help analysts play around with information in a predictive environment, pick and choose conditional variables, perform what-if analysis, juggle around with possible alternatives and come up with actionable insights. The possibilities are endless.</i></div>
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<b>Q5: To what extent does your work involve sentiment and subjective information?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>My work is to guide unstructured text analytics research for insight generation. Sentiments are a part of the insights generated.</i></div>
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<i>The focus of our research is to develop methods for analysing different types of text, mostly consumer generated, to not only understand customer delights and pain-points but also to discover the underlying process lacunae and bottlenecks that are responsible for the pain-points. These are crucial insights for an enterprise. Most often the root cause analysis involves overlaying the text analytics results with other types of information available in the form of business rules, enterprise resource directory, information exchange network etc. for generating actionable insights. Finally it also includes strategizing to involve business teams to evaluate insights and convert the insights into business actions with appropriate computation of ROI.</i></div>
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<b>Q6: How do you recommend dealing with high-volume, high-velocity, diverse data — to ensure that analyses draw on the most complete and relevant data available and deliver the most accurate results possible?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>Tata Consultancy Services has conducted several surveys across industry over the last two years to understand organizational big data requirements. The findings are published in several reports available online. (See the Tata Consultancy Services Web site, under the Digital Enterprise theme.) One of the key findings from these surveys was that many business leaders saw the impending digital transformation as siloed components affecting only certain parts of the organization. We believe that this is a critical error.</i></div>
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<i>The digital revolution that is responsible for high volumes of diverse data arriving at high velocity does not impact only a few parts of business — it affects almost every aspect. Thus our primary recommendation is to harness a holistic view of the enterprise that encompasses both technology and culture. Our focus is to help organizations achieve total digital transformation through an integrated approach that spans sales, customer service, marketing, and human resources, affecting the entire universe of business operations. The message is this: Business processes need to be rethought. The task at hand is to predict and prioritize the most likely and extreme areas of impact.</i></div>
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<b>Q7: So what are the elements of that rethinking and that prioritization?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>We urge our clients to consider the four major technology shifters under one umbrella. Big data initiatives should operate in tandem with social-media strategy, mobility plans, and cloud computing initiatives. I’ve talked about big data. The others –</i></div>
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<i>Social media has tremendous potential for changing both business-to-business and business-to-consumer engagement. It is also a powerful way to build “crowdsourcing” solutions among partners in an ecosystem. Moving beyond traditional sales and services, social media also has tremendous role in supply-chain and human resource management.</i></div>
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<i>Mobile apps are here to transform the way business operated for ages. They are also all set to change the way employees use organizational resources. Thus there is a pressure to rethink business rules and processes.</i></div>
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<i>There will also soon be a need for complete infrastructure revision to ward off the strains imposed in meeting data needs. While cloud computing initiatives are on the rise, we still see them signed up by departments rather than enterprises. The fact that cloud offerings are typically paid for by subscription makes them economical when signed up by enterprises.</i></div>
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<i>Having said that we also believe there is no “one size fits all” strategy. Enterprises may need to redesign their workplaces where business will work closely with IT to redesign its products and services, mechanisms for communicating with customers, partners, vendors and employees, business models and business processes.</i></div>
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<b>Q8: Could you say more about data and analytical challenges?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>The greatest challenges while dealing with unstructured data analytics for an enterprise is to measure accuracy, especially in absence of ground truths and also effectiveness of measures taken. To check effectiveness of actionable insights, one possibility is to use the A/B testing approach. It is a great way to understand the target audience and evaluate different options. We also feel it is always better to start with internal data — something that is assumed to be intuitively understood. If results match known results, well and good — your faith in the chosen methods increase. If they don’t match — explore, validate and then try out other alternatives, if not satisfied.</i></div>
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<b>Q9: Could you provide an example (or two) that illustrates really well what your organization and clients have been able to accomplish via analytics, that demonstrate strong ROI?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: <i>I will describe two case studies. In the first one, one of our clients wanted to analyze calls received over a particular at their toll-free call-center. These calls were of unusually high duration. The aim was to reduce operational cost for running the call center without compromising on customer satisfaction. The calls were transcribed into text. Analysis of the calls revealed several insights that could be immediately transformed into actionable insights. The different types of analyses carried out and insights revealed were broadly categorized into different buckets as follows:</i></div>
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<li><i>Content based analysis identified that these calls contained queries pertaining to existing customer accounts, queries about new products or services, status updates about transactions, and eventually requests for documents.</i></li>
<li><i>Structural analysis revealed that each call requested multiple services and for different clients, which eventually led to several context switches for search of information, thereby leading to high duration. It also revealed that calls often landed at wrong points and had to be redirected several times before they could be answered.</i></li>
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<i>Based on the above findings, a restructuring of the underlying processes and call-center operations were suggested with an estimated ROI based on projected reduction in number of calls requesting for status updates or documents to be dispatched etc. based on available statistics.</i></div>
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<i>In the second case study, analysis of customer communications for the call-center of an international financial institution, done periodically over an extended period, revealed several interesting insights about how customer satisfaction could be increased from their current levels. The bank wished to obtain aggregated customer sentiments around a fixed set attributes related to their products, staff, operating environment, etc. We provided those, and the analysis also revealed several dissatisfaction root causes that were not captured in the fixed set of parameters. Several of these issues were not even within the bank’s control since those were obtained as external services. We correlated sentiment trends for different attributes with changes in customer satisfaction index to verify correctness of actions taken.</i></div>
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<i>In this case, strict monetary returns were not computed. Unlike in retail, computing ROI for financial organizations require long-term vision, strategizing, investment and monitoring of text analytics activities.</i></div>
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<b>Q10: I’m glad you’ll be speaking at LT-Accelerate. Your talk is titled “E-mail Analytics for Customer Support Centres — Gathering Insights about Support Activities, Bottlenecks and Remedies.” That’s a pretty descriptive title, but is there anything you’d like to add by way of a preview?</b></div>
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Lipika Dey: A<i> support centre is the face of an organization to its customers and emails remain the life-line of support centres for many organizations. Hence organizations spend a lot of money on running these centres efficiently and effectively. But unlike other log-based complaint resolution systems, when all communication within the organization and with the customers occur through emails, analytics becomes difficult. That’s because a lot of relevant information about the type of problems logged, the resolution times, the compliance factors, the resolution process, etc. remains embedded within the messages and that too not in a straight forward way.</i></div>
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<i>In this presentation we shall highlight some of the key analytical features that can generate interesting performance indicators for a support centre. These indicators can in turn be used to measure compliance factors and also characterize group-wise problem resolution process, inherent process complexities and activity patterns leading to bottlenecks — thereby allowing support centers to reorganize their mechanisms. It also supports a predictive model to incorporate early warnings and outage prevention.</i></div>
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Thanks Lipika, for sharing insights in this interview and in advance for your December presentation.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTYq4qY1WpDW-fd1DPgvGUjuLXxvPskFFN_FsgswYnYJ21Rpvp4bhsXFq5EalskmVJ6fhhqBTXjpnhTtA6p1LhBcFkuYcCOKA3WFrfh5kd-BPfAa-Y8EUF7DG0qX5bjkcC0iPM-Dnmu2/s1600/Seth+Grimes+sma.jpg" /></a></div>
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This Interview has been done by <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/speakers/seth-grimes" target="_blank">Mr. Seth Grimes</a>, the leading industry analyst covering text analytics, sentiment analysis, and analysis on the confluence of structured and unstructured data sources and founder of Alta Plana Corp.<br />
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William Bressandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123830622131169270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-45415379533914072702014-10-27T18:47:00.000+01:002015-05-05T21:56:56.435+02:00LT-Accelerate conference highlights textual analytics and new solutions for leveraging the business value of content<span style="font-weight: normal;">Textual analytics is a relatively new business solution for monitoring, understanding and leveraging strategic information contained in documents and media. But it is already transforming the way businesses handle their own processes, learn about their customers’ desires and opinions (VoC), and mine their databases for unexpected insights to drive better performance. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">It might at first sight sound like a rather rarefied field of data science, but textual analytics (TA) is fast becoming a must-have tool for CIOs whose job it is to select technologies with strategic thrust. </span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Its value lies in the opportunity to automate an information-gathering process that was previously nearly impossible because it was time-consuming and piecemeal. TA in fact invents a new business process: it is like having a tireless analyst plough through the massive amounts of language content generated around standard business operations to harness marketing and other insights. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">In contrast to many ways of generating business intelligence, textual analytics focuses on “unstructured” data. This quite literally means the life and times of text – or more generally language content. </span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Although human language is a slippery medium, companies supplying TA are increasingly finding that content that might at first sight appear to be “unstructured” (i.e. when compared to numerical data) can be highly structured when viewed from the emerging expertise of natural language processing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Simple ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ assessments may be useful tags for certain types of textual information on a social media, but textual analytics is making rapid progress to more valuable insights into the meanings of human communications.</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><br />
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LT-Innovate sees three key touch points that will matter for suppliers of future text analytics solutions:<br />
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<li><b>Drill-down semantics: </b>Language technology is rapidly extending its powers of analysis: while the first generation of sentiment analysis tools tended to simplify opinions into binary distinctions, new semantic tools are radically expanding the power of TA solutions to deliver finer-tuned results of what is communicated. One such field is that of “emotion recognition.” This means that TA can help identify more subtle expressions of approval, interest, concern or rejection than has been possible so far, offering a finer-grained understanding of what customers, partners and the market are saying. </li>
<li><b>Multilingual processing. </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Multiple languages pose a key challenge for any TA application. Some TA products can run text analyses in up to 20 or more languages today, a remarkable feat given the subtleties of human expressive resources. But as companies start to target some of the long tail of markets and communities, the ability to decode thoughts, feelings and opinions expressed on social media in many dozens more languages may well tempt more and more businesses. Rich linguistic resources will be needed for this, but at the same time, the results will need to be translated into a single central repository for analysis. This requires highly tailored translation technology at the right price. </span></li>
<li><b>Specialisation. </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">TA is increasingly targeting a broader palette of corporate language content. In some case this will include the content of contact centre conversations, the content of internal conference calls, or the input to online surveys. Which means that TA will need to integrate seamlessly with specialised technologies such as speech recognition and audio recording to gain purchase over the text implicit in new types of media? This will almost certainly lead to specialisations of TA in terms of business tasks, type of content, or industrial and commercial sector. </span></li>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">In a word, TA is set to move towards new forms of contextualisation that will enable it to capture the kind of semantic nuance that makes the right distinctions to address business strategy in very different domains. </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: normal;">This is just the beginning. In the longer run, it is very likely that the kind of linguistic analysis currently offered by the TA community will be embedded in a broader “cognitive computing” environment. For this scenario, learning systems will be programmed to range over corporate data to find patterns that suggest directions to be taken or decision to be made.</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">At the same time, CIOs will need to think about expanding the range of TA to other media than text – for example, video as image and as conversational content (and hence text) will also enter the content mix to be leveraged by analytics. Such developments will put huge pressures on the trust we hope to </span><br />
have in the value of our analyses as they extend over more data types.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Yet at the same time, these integrated, easy-to-use solutions will need to appeal to CIOs and others who need to rapidly engage with the voice of their customers, the voice of their staff members, the voice of their service suppliers, and more generally the competitive voice of their market segments. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">LT-Innovate believes that TA opens up a promising market in which highly-specialised language technology can provide effective responses to a business need that simply cannot be met by traditional solutions. The vital step is to recognise that one size will not fit all. Solution providers therefore need to know exactly what their potential customers need. A compelling case for textual analytics indeed! </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">This is why LT-Innovate -- the Forum for Europe's language technology industry -- and US consultancy <a href="http://altaplana.com/">Alta Plana Corporation</a>, headed by industry analyst Seth Grimes, are holding a brand new event entitled <a href="http://www.lt-accelerate.eu/">LT-Accelerate</a>. This will take place in Brussels (Belgium) on 4-5 December and is devoted to the people, players and end users of Textual Analytics.</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>Andrew Joscelynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03335028513354707926noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029221390340036204.post-51710555331776286522014-10-15T18:07:00.002+02:002015-05-05T21:57:21.292+02:00LT-Innovate pioneers new conference with industry analyst Seth Grimes: LT-Accelerate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xDjO-A7XEJs/VD6bdDMnoZI/AAAAAAAABiE/75BnyJvyRz4/s1600/LT-Accelerate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xDjO-A7XEJs/VD6bdDMnoZI/AAAAAAAABiE/75BnyJvyRz4/s1600/LT-Accelerate.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.lt-accelerate.com/" target="_blank">LT-Accelerate</a> is a unique European conference that will both educate the market about the value of language technologies and help solution providers understand market needs. The conference is designed to bring together user organizations, solution providers, researchers and consultants in a single venue that will provide learning, networking, and deal-making opportunities.</div>
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A joint production of <a href="http://www.lt-innovate.eu/" target="_blank">LT-Innovate</a> -- the Forum for Europe's language technology industry -- and U.S. consultancy <a href="http://altaplana.com/" target="_blank">Alta Plana Corporation</a>, headed by industry analyst <a href="http://altaplana.com/sethgrimes.html" target="_blank">Seth Grimes</a>, LT-Accelerate will take place on 4-5 December 2014 in Brussels.
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At LT-Accelerate, you'll hear from and network with: <br />
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ESOMAR president Dan Foreman -- Shree Dandekar, Dell Software's
information management strategy director -- Elsevier content and
innovation VP Michelle Gregory -- Prof. Stephen Pulman of the University
of Oxford -- Tony Russell-Rose, founder and director of UXLabs, a
research and design consultancy -- Lipika Dey, principal scientist at
Tata Consultancy Services Innovation Labs... to name a few speakers.
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The full agenda is <a href="http://lt-accelerate.com/programme" target="_blank">online</a>.
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Whom else will you meet? Brand and agency speakers from Havas Media, IPG
Mediabrands, Sony Mobile, Telefonica, and TOTAL. Leading technologists
from IBM Research, Synthesio, and the Universities of Antwerp and
Sheffield. Innovative solution providers including Basis Technology,
Confirmit, CrossLang, Daedalus, Ontotext and TheySay.
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LT-Accelerate is about opportunity, unique in Europe.Do not miss it!</div>
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