How to get going with asterisk: Get a vonage phone, and add on a SOFTPHONE option. Download the asterisk version 1.4.21.1 (or later?) For the BarCamp demo app I used 1.4.21.1 - Standard untar, ./configure, make, make install seems to work equally well under Mac OS X and Linux Download and install a voice from Cepstral (www.cepstral.com). The eval/demo voices work but will prefix every phrase with a "This is not licensed" nag. Make sure you download and install the correct voice for your OS. You must download and install the voice before app_swift. Download, configure, make, make install app_swift from http://www.loopfree.net/app_swift/ Backup all the files in /etc/asterisk and replace them with the few I have in config/asterisk_etc_asterisk Update the sip.conf with your phone number and password. Update swift.conf with the name of the voice you downloaded from Cepstral. Note that the frequency is included (example: William-8k) Download and install the LATEST version of adhearsion (at least as of 10-11-2008 when I gave the BarCamp talk) You'll need Ruby 1.8.6 or later first, then you should also install rubygems. adhearsion will require (perhaps as root) gem install log4r gem install rubigen gem install activesupport (may not be necessary if you have rails installed) The best way to debug is to open two windows: 1) asterisk -v -v -v -v (for very verbose, make sure the swift library runs. If it doesn't you may need to export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/swift/lib ) 2) ahn start barcamp-adhearsion (in the parent directory) To create a new adhearsion app: ahn create /path/to/directory If you need the speak_swift command ensure the module Adhearsion from my sample startup.rb is present in your startup.rb