I recently learned about 2 awards that Sensory has won over the past year. The contrast is in how we learned about them, and the different nature of these awards. It’s really amusing, so I thought I’d share my take.
Both awards were for our TrulyHandsfree™ Voice Control. One was for the significance of Sensory’s truly hands-free trigger in implementing speech recognition without using buttons, and the other was for Sensory’s chip-based implementation of a truly hands-free interface.
The first award came from Speech Technology Magazine. Sensory won their Star Performer award for 2011, and I didn’t even know we had been nominated. In fact, nobody ever told me that we had won; I found out really by chance (thanks, Bernie!) They only gave out four of these awards this year, and I’m honored and thrilled that Sensory won one of them. It’s really a testament to our team behind TrulyHandsfree… IT’S THE MOST AMAZING TECHNOLOGY. I sent kudos to Speech Tech for having the insight to understand the significance of this technology! Speech Technology Magazine has gotten so independent and non-self-serving in their awards process, that they didn’t even take the opportunity to call us and let us know! Now we know, so thanks again, Speech Tech!
In contrast…The second award came from a market research firm I’ll call the Cold Irishman. Why don’t I use their real name? Well I can’t or they might sue me. I received a call from their “Manager of IP and Copyrights” to congratulate me, and to let me know about their thoroughly independent and fair process that looked at the entire speech market and decided that Sensory stood out… blah blah blah…
I knew there was something funny going on by the guy’s title. Yeah you guessed it. To be able to tell people we won their award costs a certain price; you pay more the more you want to use it, and you can even pay more to go to an awards banquet. He offered me programs for as little as $10K, which went up in price to WAY more than that. One of the more expensive programs was that they’d make a video for us receiving the award with lots of praise from their esteemed analysts. So, I decided to go onto YouTube and see for myself how many hits last year’s award winners were getting…my memory said low double digits, but that didn’t seem possible (Sensory’s little home-made video’s often get thousands of hits.) Just for fun I looked just now at this year’s award winners – one of them had only 10 (yes TEN) hits. Most of them must have been employees… Pretty hefty price to stroke your own own ego and get almost nothing in return! I’ve always wondered who pays to be in Whoever’s Whatever? It’s probably the same CEO’s that pay to go to award dinners!
So…Many Thanks to Leonard Klie and Speech Technology Magazine…and Cold Irishman…thanks, but no thanks! Sensory deserves recognition for innovation in speech technologies based on our hard work, not on how much we pay to market it.