It had always been my dream to work at Bell Labs, the legendary R&D arm of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T.)
After two years at Booz-Allen, and time spent alongside Bell Labs engineers, I was hired by Bell Labs and awarded a One Year On Campus (OYOC) appointment, during which I obtained my Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
After completing my thesis, I spent the next 18 years at Bell Labs and its progeny Lucent Technologies and Avaya Communication, working first as a systems engineer in Holmdel, NJ.
CONVERSANT New Venture
After completing my thesis and work assignments in Holmdel, NJ, I transferred to the Bell Labs Columbus, OH facility where, over the years, I performed many of the technical job functions involved in with developing and supporting AT&Ts Integrated Voice Response (IVR) offering known as CONVERSANT: a proprietary hardware and software product.
CONVERSANT was an AT&T Bell Labs “Intrapreneurial Venture”, i.e. a new business venture being incubated within Bell Labs and using Bell Labs staff. AT&T had just been divested, gave up its “regulated monopoly” status, and had to compete with nimble technology players including Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and later, Cisco, Google, and others.
AT&T’s “new ventures,” like CONVERSANT, were meant to jump start the competitive culture and to turn key technology innovations into profitable product lines.
The venture produced the CONVERSANT VIS, Intuity, AUDIX, Audix Voice Power, and FAX Attendant trademarked systems which are still in service worldwide.
The original Bell Labs speech recognition and transaction processing technologies–and associated patents–are built into most every speech recognition and transaction processing system on the market today.
CONVERSANT Model 80
Lucent Technologies
In 1996, AT&T “spun off” almost all of the remaining Bell Labs into Lucent Technologies.
On October 1, 1996, on Lucent Technologies’ first day in existence, each “founder” received 100 founder shares and new business cards. Otherwise, my fellow Bell Labs colleagues and I performed the same jobs in the same place.
Marc attacks his job with enthusiasm and energy. Steve W. Handy, Coach, AT&T Bell Labs
CONVERSANT V7 and V8
Among other projects, I managed two major generic releases of CONVERSANT: V7 and V8.
Your focus on customer satisfaction is unsurpassed…George Hsieh, Coach, AT&T Bell Labs.
AT&T Fax Actions
After working hands-on with CONVERSANT hardware and software and managing the AT&T Fax Attendant R1.0 project that first brought FAX capabilities into the CONVERSANT product line, I discovered a novel way to combine technologies and created–in my “garage”–a product that I named the AT&T Fax Actions which enabled FAX operations within CONVERSANT transactions, which, up to this point, had never been possible.
“Selling” this product to AT&T executives was a challenge at first but, ultimately, the AT&T Fax Actions became part of the AT&T CONVERSANT product line. AT&T recognized me for this work with an AT&T Trailblazer award.
Once the product was ready, I embarked on a “world tour”, introducing sales and support staff in Europe, Asia, and Latin America to the new offer and training them in how to sell, deploy, program, test, and support it.
This took me away from my family for stretches of time but made for great airport reunions.
Picasso CONVERSANT Integration
Later, a Bell Labs colleague and I integrated AT&T’s “Picasso” picture phone with CONVERSANT and produced a multimedia real estate shopping application that became viral among AT&T executives, providing a vision for image and video enabled transactions that presaged multimedia internet applications.
Thanks for the great initiative and creativity on this. I can’t wait to get it in the market. You should be very proud of this accomplishment. Karen Varnas, on multimedia prototype demonstrated to AT&T executives, Vice President, AT&T.
We were granted a European patent for this work.
AT&T Bell Labs Orchestra
One of my favorite projects at Bell Labs was using my musical skills and playing timpani with the Bell Labs Orchestra, which was broadcast nationwide on the PBS program “Live From AT&T Bell Labs.”
For this performance, I spent a week in Manhattan, met and worked with American composing legend, David Diamond, rehearsed his symphony with the orchestra, then performed it for a live TV broadcast.
We taped the TV segment in the Sony Studios, which also produced Michael Jackson’s music. A handful of orchestra musicians were selected for special vignette interviews, me among them.
Preparing and staffing the AT&T Display at CeBIT Trade Show, Hanover Germany
Another interesting assignment, was installing, programming, and representing AT&T’s CONVERSANT product line at the CeBIT international technology trade show in Hanover, Germany, and providing demos to potential customers, partners, and resellers.
The AT&T booth at CeBIT was had two levels, attractive displays, lighting, a cafe, and meeting rooms to discuss and close sales.
Below, I’m programming the CONVERSANT MAP-100 IVR Platform with speaker independent, phonetic based speech recognition (and FAX capability)
Post cards from CeBIT
International Engagements
Singapore
Budapest, Hungary
Kyoto, Japan
Tokyo, Japan
Torino, Italy
Milan, Italy
India
Your efforts have certainly made the difference and increased the potential for the sale for the Central Railways in India. Jayshree S. Joglekar, AT&T Bell Labs India Ltd.
England
The Netherlands
Belgium
Spain
Diversity in STEM Hiring
A diverse staff–diverse nationalities, cultures, fields, functions, personalities, languages, outlooks, senses of humor–was one of the keys to Bell Labs success, but it was sometimes challenging for us to identify talent. Believing in this mission, I devised and initiated a recruiting program at the University of Akron.
At the University of Akron, I identified technical talent early on in the students’ education and then nurtured that talent via internships. AT&T hired several talented engineers through this program. AT&T recognized this work by presenting me with the AT&T Diversity Award.
Habitat For Humanity
Members of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Labs were very resourceful and positively impacted the community in many ways. Habitat For Humanity was a favorite community project.