I've recently replied to an email about where this project should go next and I thought it would be nice if that was shown somewhere a bit more publicly. This has been tidied up and anonmised to the extent that it probably would have been faster if I *hadn't* copied and pasted.

Hey Joe
Just wanted to say congrats with the open voice factory!

Quick couple of random thoughts

- Whats your thoughts on Brian’s OBF format? Is there a OBF converter of your PowerPoint templates to OBF?
- Whats you main aim with the Factory - Free Voice Output - or/and Board Creation system?
- Whats your next/main aims?

So let me give you the 60 second summary.

The Factory will export to OBF as soon as possible. Partly because that's a Good Thing in general and makes everyone's lives easier, and partly because Brian is a nice guy and I want to reinforce what he's doing.

In an ideal world, the Factory would just create an OBF file at a link and then everyone would use a free OBF reading app as the voice itself. As soon as such an app exists then I can stop working on the TTS app that we have and concentrate on the Factory itself. There's lots to do there.

Main aim of the Factory is that everyone in the world has access to communication technology for free. Right now you get access to the tech if you live in one of about six countries and that makes me sad.

Next aim is to properly embed in the community. We've got some researchers using it, but I'd like it to be the de facto choice for prototyping and experiments.

But that's just my next aim. It's open source right, so I should be asking you: What's *your* next aim for the project ?

J