Data Collection Hardware and Software

Appen will recommend, source and manage the IT and telecommunications solution for a data collection. Appen has a range of recording equipment, including microphones, recording software, recording platforms, audio interface and visual display equipment and telecommunications infrastructure.

For example, Appen's telecommunications facilities can receive and process up to 30 simultaneous calls for a telephony data collection. This equipment can be located in Appen offices or as portable solutions. Currently, Appen has active telecommunication facilities in Australia, Europe, India and North America.

Appen has developed tailor made solutions to address the special requirements of the various modes of collection. These include:

• Sophisticated software tools for data collection
• Advanced telecommunication platforms
• Custom built in-car recording platforms
• Software applications to assist with the collection of large scale text corpora

Data collection requires outstanding project management skills. Appen has sophisticated processes for the management of data collection for international projects. This includes establishing complex acoustic environments, recruiting speakers according to detailed demographic requirements, innovative approaches to incentive payments and the management of data quality throughout a project.

In the past twelve months, Appen has collected speech data from over 20,000 speakers across 30+ languages.