Three years ago, when I moved to Redmond from Silicon Valley, I had no idea I would stay working on Speech Recognition technology for so long.  My previous life had been spent on TV, at Microsoft and earlier at WebTV Networks, where I helped develop and launch products for Japan, Europe, and the U.S.  Before that, I was at Apple Computer, in marketing for Apple Japan where I worked on lots of great products, many now long forgotten.  Nothing about my background was particularly focused on SR, although I've always loved languages for both humans and machines.  But the speech team here at Microsoft was so much fun that somehow I ended up staying much longer than I intended.

But recently a great opportunity opened up for me to get back to business and marketing, something I did for most of my career and a part of my life I have missed.  For all the great things about speech and product development, I didn't get to spend as much time with customers and real users as I used to, and I'm a believer that you need to spend face time with customers if you're going to stay in touch with the future, so I'm both sad and excited to say that as of this week I've switched teams within Microsoft, to work in marketing on some very cool new products being built inside Microsoft Research. The first generation has already been announced, so I'll have much more to say about that once I get up to speed.  Yes, it uses speech technology, among many other cool ideas. 

Today I put together a new blog for my new team, but I'll continue writing here for a more personal perspective so please don't go away.  Thanks again to everyone who has followed me on this blog for the past three years.  I can't wait to tell you more, and meanwhile, happy speaking!