Outsourced – I can Do it too
Conan O’Brian
Jim calling from Earth link
You Suck at photoshop
Demetri Martin Comedian
Ahmad the dead terrorist Jeff Dunham
Rives
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=375172747
http://host-d.oddcast.com/php/workshop_UI/door=237&cl=86&AID=0
* Motivation:
Assim Butt is a computer engineer by trade, a telephone operator by day and most impressively a comedian by night. I am doing my project about Assim’s dream to become a comedian in America and I am also documenting his journey along the way. Assim’s biggest goal is to not only make Americans laugh but also to shine light on the much talked about issue of outsourcing jobs to third world countries and how Americans may be able to get the jobs back, only if they are creative.
* Problem Statement:
The problem I am tackling is the fact that Assim is actually NOT real; in fact he is a character I made up for my own comedy routine. I am using CallXML 3.0 to script out the interaction between Assim and callers. I am also looking into Flash and xml, the Opera browser and its audio/video capabilities as well as various other audio software. My initial ideas is to not only to make people laugh but to take the old standup comedy routine with ventriloquist / puppets and refresh it with a new interactive/ animated character who has a mind of his own. I have done research on various voice xml software as well as comedy routines and find the simplicity of smaller scaled experiences extremely valuable. In this case, an interaction between a caller and my character (Assim) over the phone. I also want to see if this character works then in order to earn back some of the outsourced jobs, whether American’s need to learn to record their voices and get creative and make automated characters who answer calls from America.
* Approach:
My process includes various scripts written in both VoiceXml and CallXml that are uploaded to my school server and then called upon using Voxeo either from a regular telephone or Skype. I also recorded various audio files with both male and female voices to go long with my script and to make my character sound real. My most important variables are my narrative behind the whole project which is the act that Assim is an outsourced call operator working for a real estate brokerage company, he lives in Pakistan, and he dreams to become a comedian and move to America. I also focused on the software I used to realize my character as well as the flyers around town and online postings on craigslist.com I used to entice people to interact with my work.
* Results:
The online postings as well as the flyers triggered a few people to call in and inquire. Two out of Three people didn’t seem to notice whether Assim was a real man or a character who’s speech was pre scripted and recorded as audio files and his answers are simply triggered but a few keywords that the computer recognizes from the caller’s response. One person laughed and questioned the call, especially because in callxml if Assim asks a question, as soon as the caller responds, Assim’s audio is cut off and he then goes on to the next question, leaving the caller wondering what happened since that’s not how a natural interaction occurs over the phone.
* Conclusions:
In conclusion my project is not as funny as I started out with and its not going to change the outsourced call market, however the idea of updating the old puppet ventriloquist act was pretty successful, and it also help me to shine some light on the fact that a human to human interaction is still valuable and even if Americans want to try to reclaim the outsourced jobs and bring them back to America, a lot more work and planning will be required especially to build massive databases of pre-recorded audio files, anticipating how to tackle the issues customers/ callers will have when they call the call center for help and not let them wonder how many times they can press ‘0’ and finally reach the operator so they may have their questions actually answered.
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