Owner & Managing Director, Prompt! Speech Applications
Brussels Area, Belgium
- Current
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- Linguistic Advisor at Odiogo
- Owner & Managing Director at Prompt! Speech Applications
- Past
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- Researcher at University of Antwerp, Belgium
- Group Manager Voice Application Development at MagicPhone, a Tellme Company
- Language Modelling Engineer & Team Manager at Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products
- System Manager & Web Project Manager at Allmansland
- Language Engineer at Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems
- Education
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- Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Belgium
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
- University of Essex
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
- Connections
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244
connections
- Industry
- Information Technology and Services
- Websites
Frederik Durant’s Summary
Frederik Durant, MBA has 15 years experience as a software developer, project leader and consultant in the field of language, speech and Internet technology. Until further notice, he is the only Certified VoiceXML Application Developer in Belgium. Frederik speaks five natural languages, is proficient in Perl, Java & PHP, and prefers to work in agile LAMP environments.
In his career, Frederik has been involved in machine translation (Siemens Nixdorf), database-driven websites (Allmansland), mass-market dictation products (L&H), speech-driven phone applications (Tellme Europe), and biomedical text mining (University of Antwerp).
For the last 5 years his passion has been to help build the speech-enabled telephony market by designing and developing compelling self-service applications for established call centers and young open web platforms.
Frederik is a member of ContactCentres.be, the professional organisation of Belgian Contact Centres. He was chairman of CC.be's Speech Technology Workgroup from July 2005 to February 2007, and is still an active member.
Frederik Durant’s Specialties:
Speech-enabled phone applications, based on VXML/VoiceXML. Voice biometrics. See http://www.prompt-speechapps.com/ for more detailed information. Strong focus on usability (sine qua non for speech applications) and on controlled development processes. Frederik Durant's services span the full application lifecycle, including strategic consulting, application discovery, design & development, and post-deployment tuning.
Frederik Durant’s Experience
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Linguistic Advisor
Odiogo
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)
November 2006 — Present (3 years 1 month)
Part-time consulting and development work in a start-up environment. Some marketing (white paper writing, newsletter review), primarily design & development of various linguistic improvement processes. See www.odiogo.com
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Owner & Managing Director
Prompt! Speech Applications
(Privately Held; 5001-10,000 employees; Computer Software industry)
July 2004 — Present (5 years 5 months)
http://www.prompt-speechapps.com/
References include Dexia Bank (speaker verification for VIP customers, with Dimension Data), Quentris (voice user interface usability audit of EVA, the Electronic Voice Assistant), Belgacom (VoiceXML teaching in Dutch & French) and The Ring Ring Company (speech tech program management, design and development of Belgian address recognition solution for phone, SMS and chat channels; design & development of speech and SMS interface for mobile ticketing; Web Service development in Perl & Java) -
Researcher
University of Antwerp, Belgium
(Educational Institution; Biotechnology industry)
February 2003 — May 2004 (1 year 4 months)
http://www.biomint.org/
http://cnts.uia.ac.be/ -
Group Manager Voice Application Development
MagicPhone, a Tellme Company
(Information Technology and Services industry)
September 2001 — October 2002 (1 year 2 months)
http://www.tellme.com/
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Language Modelling Engineer & Team Manager
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products
(Public Company; Information Technology and Services industry)
May 1998 — August 2001 (3 years 4 months)
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System Manager & Web Project Manager
Allmansland
(Information Technology and Services industry)
July 1996 — May 1998 (1 year 11 months)
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Language Engineer
Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems
(Public Company; Information Technology and Services industry)
July 1994 — June 1996 (2 years )
Frederik Durant’s Education
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Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Belgium
Executive MBA , General Management , September 2002 — July 2004
Magna Cum Laude
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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
MSc , Computer Science (spec. Computational Linguistics) , 1990 — 1995
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University of Essex
Erasmus Exchange Student , Computational Linguistics , 1990 — 1991
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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
MA , Romance Philology (French - Spanish) , 1986 — 1990
Additional Information
Frederik Durant’s Websites:
Frederik Durant’s Groups:
Vlerick Alumni, ContactCentres.be
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Vlerick Leuven Gent Alumni -
The Language Technology Group -
K.U.Leuven Computer Science Alumni -
VoiceXML Forum -
Voice and Speech Specialists -
VVKSM - Scouts en Gidsen Vlaanderen -
BetaGroup Belgium -
SPEECH Community -
OpenCoffee Club Brussels -
Perl -
Natural Language Processing People -
Contact Centre Professionals Belgium -
Lernout & Hauspie Alumni -
Communauté du Vocal -
Semantic Belgium -
MBA & ICT -
VoiceXML Developers
Frederik Durant’s Honors:
Bronze INCA Award for speech application "realtime Belgian train times",
see http://traininfo.i-speech.com/
Winner of the quadrilingual (NL-FR-EN-DE) dictation contest "Dictee van de Toekomst", organised by JCI Vlaanderen, Brussels, 1996
Frederik Durant’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- consulting offers
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
