Hello, I’m Michael Koch, a software architect and software engineer with more than three decades of experience in software development, system design, and human-machine interaction.
My professional background reaches back to the 1990s, when software projects were still shaped by desktop systems, embedded devices, and custom enterprise applications. Since then, I have worked through several major technology shifts, including the rise of the web, mobile platforms, connected devices, speech recognition, cloud-based systems, and most recently generative AI. Having worked across these different phases gives me a broad technical perspective and a strong sense for which technologies become durable foundations and which are only temporary trends.
A recurring theme throughout my career has been the interface between people and technology. Long before modern voice assistants became common, I was involved in projects related to speech-enabled systems, dialog technology, and intelligent user interaction. This included work on voice-controlled applications and automotive systems where natural language interaction had to function reliably under real-world conditions.
I have contributed to projects connected to brands such as Audi, Volkswagen, BMW, and Porsche. These projects involved areas such as in-car infotainment, voice control, connected services, and software components for digital user experiences inside the vehicle. Work in this field requires combining usability, embedded constraints, reliability, and complex integration across many systems.
My experience also includes software for consumer and industrial products. Earlier projects included applications for household devices, embedded environments, and customized digital systems where software had to operate reliably on specialized hardware with limited resources. These kinds of projects provided practical engineering experience that remains valuable today.
Over time, my work expanded from implementation into architecture and technical coordination. I became increasingly involved in structuring larger systems, defining interfaces, improving maintainability, and helping teams organize software that can evolve over many years. Good architecture is often less about fashionable patterns and more about clarity, stable boundaries, and sensible trade-offs.
Today, I work at semvox GmbH, a CARIAD Group company. My current focus includes software architectural design, generative AI, and test automation. I contribute to scalable voice solutions, AI-supported systems, and robust architectures for automotive software environments. This includes both conceptual work and practical implementation.
Generative AI has added a new layer to software engineering, but in many ways it continues themes that have interested me for years: language, interaction, automation, and system intelligence. I am particularly interested in how large language models can be integrated into dependable products rather than used only as demonstrations.
Alongside day-to-day engineering work, I follow broader developments in technology and industry. Topics that interest me include digital sovereignty, software economics, the long-term effects of automation, and how AI changes the value of software creation itself.
This website is a place where I share thoughts on these subjects, along with observations from practical engineering work and long experience across several generations of technology.
If you would like to exchange ideas or discuss software, architecture, AI, or technical projects, feel free to get in touch.
Hello, my name is Michael Koch and I am the owner of this website.
I have been working as a freelance software developer and consultant since 1994, mainly in the areas of information systems, language technology, and telecommunications. Over the course of time, I have participated in several major projects in which GUI-based and voice-controlled information systems have been developed for various car manufacturers and telecommunications providers.
In 2001 I graduated from university with an M.A. in Information Science and Physics.
The first project of my own was the design and reference implementation of a voice dialog control for multimedia components in vehicles, on behalf of temic AG and Porsche AG.
As part of the research project “Workplace of the Future”, a collaboration between the University of Regensburg and BMW AG, I was involved in programming an information system with a touchscreen GUI as an assistance solution for warehouse management and rework from 2005 to 2006.
SPEECH EXPERTS GmbH
In 2002 I was a co-founder and co-owner of SPEECH EXPERTS GmbH. The company was founded by five employees of the Chair for Information Science at the University of Regensburg as a GmbH. It combined many years of know-how from research and development in the field of language technology. The founders worked on numerous projects in co-operation with Audi, Bosch, DaimlerChrysler, Porsche, Ericsson, Siemens, Sony, Telekom, Temic, and Toshiba. The technical starting point for the foundation was a dialog manager based on Smalltalk, which enabled rapid prototyping for voice applications in the automotive environment.
In 2003, the SPEECH EXPERTS had their best-known project with Bosch-Siemens home appliances, which was reported in the media worldwide. The voice-operated washing machine “Hermine” was developed from a master’s thesis and was presented at CeBIT: Upon request, Hermine gave tips and recommendations for sorting and maintaining the laundry and for the washing process itself. Hermine started the desired program with a voice command.
In the following two years, the company mainly dealt with the development of multimodal operating concepts in cars with a focus on voice control on behalf of Robert Bosch GmbH.
SPEXBOX
In 2005 I took over the management of the software development of the communication software SPEXBOX. This is a software solution that is primarily aimed at small and medium-sized companies. It is sold in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland by over 300 specialist trade and distribution partners and used in over 30,000 workplaces.
In addition to voice-controlled phone operator, fax server and voicemail system, the software also offers other modules related to corporate telephony. The software basis is a dialog manager implemented in C ++. With numerous abstract software interfaces, it enables the simple creation, modification and connection of voice dialogs to the components required for this, such as voice recognition, voice output, databases and of course the use of various communication channels such as ISDN or VoIP.