Google updates its Cloud Speech API with support

Google’s Cloud Speech API has allowed builders to apply Google’s offerings to transcribe spoken phrases into textual content because its release in 2016 is getting a chief update today. The most interesting of those might be the addition of assistance for 30 new languages on top of the 89 languages the provider already understood (although, to be honest, Google includes multiple regional editions of English, Spanish, and Arabic in its total count). These new languages consist of Bengali, Latvian, and Swahili and, in step with Google, have approximately one thousand million speakers.

Google

On this pinnacle, Google also added a few new middle functions to the provider. Among those is help for word-level timestamps. The concept here is to tag each word with its timestamp so that builders can, for instance, without problems, permit their customers to listen to what a given phrase appears like. That’s especially interesting for human-augmented transcription and translation offerings that use this API to speed up their workflows.

“Having the capacity to map the audio to the text with time stamps considerably reduces the time spent proofreading transcripts,” says Happy Scribe co-founder André Bastie, whose organization uses the provider for its $0.10/minute interview transcription provider. The kind of files developers add to the carrier can now also be up to 3 hours long —up from 80 minutes inside the previous model. Developers can also ask for a quota extension to upload documents that are even longer. Like before, developers can get 60 mins of unfastened audio processing through the Speech API, and each extra 15 seconds is billed at $ zero.006.

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“The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.”Sydney J. Harris. Leadership mastery in the digital age requires the integration of skills. Whether your dominant skill is technology aptitude or your chief skill is dealing with people, the future requires us to integrate our skills to achieve leadership mastery in the digital age.

 

If you are a tech-savvy leader, you are likely smart, capable, analytical, process-oriented, fast, and focused. These skills are highly valued in the workplace. It is time to integrate tech skills with people management skills to improve overall leadership effectiveness and move your team and the organization forward. The skills needed to be a masterful leader in these digital times include being tech-savvy and evolutionary.

In the past, the  Speech development  API of people skills has often been put aside as too ‘touchy-feely’ or non-important, and in the past decade, there has been a higher value placed on technological skills. Since the global economic challenges in 2008, progressive organizations have noticed the gap. They have been investing in training and developing their leaders to include highly developed leadership skills related to the ‘people side of the business. A talented, trained workforce is an asset that companies now understand the value of and, as such, now know that they must have great leaders who inspire and develop the talent within, or their good talent will leave and go elsewhere.

A few years ago, I had a consulting contract with a high-tech company experiencing challenges keeping their Generation Y employees. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the Baby Boomer leaders were not adapting to the attitudes and work styles of Gen Y. In that company, the Baby Boomer leaders had an attitude of superiority and demanded all employees conform to the old kind of ‘my way or the highway.’ As you can imagine, this did not go over very well with the Gen Y employees, and many highly skilled employees left in droves.

As technology leaders become younger and younger, the challenges have switched to having the leadership knowledge and understanding of human behavior to keep the team happy, functioning, and creating superior results. Baby Boomer leaders had an attitude of superiority and demanded all employees to conform. As you can imagine, this did not go over well with the Gen Y employees, and many of them were leaving in droves.

There is a need in today’s modern workplace and the workplace of the future to have leaders who are adaptable, astute, and able to mobilize people to perform their work at their highest levels, manage remote teams and flexible work teams, and be technologically savvy, leaders who are more than good; leaders who have leadership mastery.

With a lot of focus on the technological aspects of the work, many leaders have lost sight of good change leadership tactics or have never been exposed to them. This chapter examines the difference between a tech-savvy leader and a people-savvy leader. People don’t leave their jobs – they leave their leaders – a harsh reality you have likely experienced as an employee and a leader.

I wanted this to be discussed with the entire group because, in this scenario, the leader focused purely on his tech-savvy skills and was not employing any people-savvy skills. There were many others similar to him in the audience. The person who texted the question dared to self-identify to the group, and we worked through how he could get his team to stop politicking and focus on the work. The ideas presented to him were:

#1- Have a team meeting (virtual or in-person) regularly (weekly if possible) to address the goals for the upcoming week, who is doing what, and the latest news from your boss and the company.

#2 – Identify the one or two people who are the ‘influencers’ of the politicking and take them out for a coffee or lunch to talk about the company or schedule a one-on-one Skype if they are remote workers, their satisfaction with their job and what they need to help them focus on getting the work done. Having the support of the influencer(s) is a major advantage.

When the audience member was given these ideas, he said aloud, “Geez, this managing person is a lot of work!” Therein lies the real challenge for most leaders! Many leaders get caught up in deadlines, tech updates, and business results, and they forget that you must rely on your people to achieve any of these things successfully. People are not machines. They are human and emotional and need to be treated as valued members of your team.

People don’t leave their jobs- they leave their leaders- a harsh reality and one you have likely experienced both as an employee yourself and as a leader. As a leader, you have to ask yourself if you are willing to help people succeed, grow people, and ultimately focus the time and energy to be a great leader. As the workplace continues to speed up and change, it is more important now to focus on both the tech and people side of the business, and this means knowing who you are as a leader and adapting to the reality of managing people.