Innovation Day in Brussels

Microsoft is showing off a bunch of new technologies at Innovation Day this week in Europe.  Bill Gates kicked the whole thing off, but our own Miguel Dias is there too, talking about our Language Development Centre in Portugal.   We just received a €178,000 contract from the Portuguese government to do more work on language development in Lisbon. Read our full press release and this clip:

“We believe that building and maintaining world-class speech components is greatly enhanced by an on-the-ground development presence in the country,” said Richard Sprague, group programme manager of the Speech and Natural Language group at Microsoft. “The Portuguese local language development group has already achieved considerable results, particularly with our auto attendant for Microsoft Portugal, and this contract will help MLDC further expand its activities.”

Miguel's team is doing a lot in Lisbon now, including work on acoustic models for Portuguese.  What's neat about this, I think, is that this is an example of a team building a Microsoft language product in their own country.  I'll have lots more to say about this later.