Update Jan 22nd, 2010: The post below was written on May 8, 2009.  While I haven't kept in touch with everybody who worked on Response Point, I can happily say that most of the people I have kept up with did move on to good jobs, many at Microsoft (including me).  I hope that anybody who hasn't landed on their feet yet has the opportunity soon.  BTW, I saw in Facebook today that another one of my friends (non-RP, non-Microsoft) who was laid off in mid 2009 just got a job today - very cool, and a big relief.

Microsoft announced a round of layoffs on Tuesday, and I was included.  With the economy the way it is, it's understandable that cut-backs need to be made.  I'm no longer working on Response Point.

For now, I'm focusing on figuring out what I'm going to do next, and won't spend much time on this blog.  So, if you find yourself clicking through to this blog, and you have a question you want to ask:

1. There is still a team working on Response Point.  For ongoing help with Response Point, please refer to the main Response Point blog: http://blogs.technet.com/rp, where you can ask questions.  If you have any questions about how these cuts affect the project, here's an initial blurb: http://blogs.technet.com/rp/archive/2009/05/07/next-chapter-for-response-point.aspx.  You can mail John Frederiksen directly if you have specific questions (he's the general manager - johnfre@microsoft.com).
2. If you have questions about speech APIs, speech recognition, or speech synthesis, it's years since I posted on any of that stuff, but I still get a lot of questions about it, and google analytics shows that half the hits I get on this blog are from searches related to speech technology. That's kinda cool :-).  Please mail sapi5@microsoft.com, or check Rob Chambers' blog http://blogs.msdn.com/robch/.  

I'll update this blog when things get clearer for me.

Thanks,

 /Rob