Every day technologists such as ourselves seek to use technology to improve peoples lives. Over the weekend I was involved in a effort to speech enable an Katrina evacuee application. A number of Microsoft employees, key partners, and service organizations combined to help Katrina survivors and their families and friends. We developed an evacuee tracking application, KatrinaSafe.com, which utilizes a web application and services, .NET client and the Speech Server platform report evacuee status, locate evacuees and notifies people on evacuee status. Just helping reunite one Katrina survivor with one loved one will satisfy our goal.

After assembling a dedicated team of Microsoft technologists and partnering with Intervoice for development and hosting the speech application planning and development started Friday evening. By Tuesday evening the first application was certified for production (this included extensive functional, integration and performance testing) and Intervoice's hosting facility was ready. An amazing effort!

On Monday morning eWeek captured the intensity of the weekend: Microsoft Brings .Net to Katrina Relief Effort

It is incredible to be involved in such a clear application of technology to directly help the people we serve.

Cheers!
Chris