Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I build high-craft software and the teams that build it. I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

VoiceXML for web developers

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 15 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

17 Dec 2009

Over at the Voxeo developer’s blog, I’ve started a series of blog posts on building voice apps with the VoiceXML standard. As a web developer, building voice apps sounds like a complicated process. From the first blog post...

Before joining Voxeo, I wasn’t much of a voice guy. I’m a web guy. I was pretty sure that voice applications were created through witchcraft. Turns out, there’s no magic involved, just some standards and markup languages. If you can create a web app, you can create a voice app.

My goal at Voxeo is to reduce the complications behind building real-time communications apps. Voice, SMS, and IM are all easy to add to an existing web app, and I intend to show you how. To get started, read my first two posts on VoiceXML for web developers: the introduction where I explain what the options are and get a phone number set up, and Hello World where I create a simple VoiceXML application. Next up will be adding speech recognition and touch-tone input to the application.

Recently Written

Think Systems, not Symptoms
Dec 15: Piecemeal process creation frustrates teams and slows work. Stop patching problems and start solving systems. Adopting a systems thinking approach helps you design processes that are efficient, aligned with goals, and truly add value.
Your Policies Aren’t Your Culture
Dec 13: Policies guide behavior, but culture is the lived norms and values of your team. Policies reflect culture -- they don’t define it. Netflix’s parental leave shift didn’t change its culture of freedom and responsibility. It clarified how to live it.
Lighten Your Process Burden
Dec 7: Everyone hates oppressive processes, but somehow we keep managing to create them.
Product Add-Ons Are An Expansion Myth
Dec 1: Add-ons can enhance your product’s appeal but won’t drive significant market growth. To expand your customer base, focus on developing standalone products.
Protecting your Product Soul when the Same Product meets New People.
Nov 23: Expand into new markets while preserving your product’s core value. Discover how to adapt and grow without losing your product’s soul.
Building the Next Big Thing: A Framework for Your Second Product
Nov 19: You need a first product sooner than you think. Here's a framework for helping you identify a winner.
A Framework for Scaling product teams
Oct 9: The people, processes, and systems that make up a product organization change radically as you go through the stages of a company. This framework will guide that scaling.
My Networked Webcam Setup
Sep 25: A writeup of my network-powered conference call camera setup.

Older...

What I'm Reading