We catch up with 4 Amazon Alexa Champions to discuss the then, now and future of the Alexa skills ecosystem and the voice first community.Presented by ReadspeakerReadspeaker is a pioneering voice technology company that provides lifelike Text to Speech (TTS) services.Whether you're needing a TTS voice for your IVR system, voice application, automobile, robot, public service announcement system, website or anywhere else, Readspeaker have you covered.They've been in the TTS game for over 20 years and have in-depth knowledge and experience in AI and Deep Neural Networks, which they put to work in creating custom TTS voices for the world's biggest brands.If you're in the market for any form of TTS technology, check out Readspeaker today.In this episodeThe Alexa Champions program is an honorary award given by Amazon in recognition of great service to the Alexa platform and ecosystem.All four of today's guests are Alexa Champions, and they take us for a walk down memory lane and discuss:what the community and the voice first ecosystem was like when they first startedwhat made them start building Alexa skillsthe signs that signalled things were going wellthe current state of the voice first communitywhat they wish for in futureSteve Arkonovich and Eric Olsen were two of the very first Alexa Champions. Nick Schwab followed in the next batch, then Tim Kahle.Steve was building skills before the Alexa Skills Kit even existed! Over time, he's built up a rack of skills published under his company, Philosophical Creations. His skill, Big Sky, is one of the most used skills on the platforms and is to this day a sterling example of a great voice first and multi modal experience.Some of Eric Olsen's first skills were Complibot and Insultibot, skills that generate random compliments and insults for users every day. Eric is the founder of 3PO Labs has always been a keen member of the voice community and is one of the most active members in the Alexa Slack channel, offering help, advice and guidance for budding skill developers.Nick Schwab is the founder of Invoked apps and runs some of the most used skills on the Alexa platform. His suite of sleep sounds bring in around 300,000 users per day, a side hustle that famously earned him enough money to buy a Tesla.Tim Kahle is the co-founder of 169 Labs, based out of Germany and the organiser of the All About Voice conference. Tim and co-founder, Dominik Meißner, won an Alexa hackathon in Germany in 2016, released a series of skills and founded one of the leading voice agencies in Germany off the back of it. The All About Voice conference in Munich is the leading voice first event in Europe.LinksSteve on Twitter and LinkedInEric on Twitter and LinkedInNick on Twitter and LinkedInTim on Twitter and LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twilio is a magical tool, and Autopilot is its NLU platform that voice devs and designers need to check out. In this episode we're taking a look at what Autopilot is, what are its core concepts, and how it differs from other NLU services.To get $10 free, use our referral link at www.twilio.com/referral/ZQRq9vMusic featured in this episode:Blossoming by Sound of MusicLogjam by Sound of MusicSaunter by Sound of MusicMassive_Attack by Sound of MusicTiny_Spoons by Sound of Music Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adva Levin joins us to share why you should design personas for your voice apps, how you can create them, as well as how to work with voice acting talent.Presented by ReadspeakerReadspeaker is a pioneering voice technology company that provides lifelike Text to Speech (TTS) services.Whether you're needing a TTS voice for your IVR system, voice application, automobile, robot, public service announcement system, website or anywhere else, Readspeaker have you covered.They've been in the TTS game for over 20 years and have in-depth knowledge and experience in AI and Deep Neural Networks, which they put to work in creating custom TTS voices for the world's biggest brands.If you're in the market for any form of TTS technology, check out Readspeaker today.In this episodeClifford Nass and Scott Brave, in their book Wired for Speech, showed that whether you want to or not, humans cannot help but form a picture in their minds about the voice they're hearing. Just from a voice alone, we can form an understanding of the gender, age, education, location and mood of someone, and more.So whether you create a persona for your voice applications or not, your users will form one anyway. That's why its so important to create one, so that you can try and establish some consistency in the mind of your users. Having a persona documented is also like a style guide for conversation designers. It helps guide writing and creates synergy on projects where many designers are needed. Adva Levin has created some of the most recognisable and award winning Alexa skills, including Kids Court, and also provides consultancy and design services for organisations through her company, Pretzel Labs. Most of Adva's work requires some kind of persona design. So who better to take us through the why's and the how's?LinksPretzel LabsAdva Levin and Pretzel Labs on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Andrew Wilson, Chief Content Officer at Matchbox.io, shares the secret sauce for creating the kind of Alexa skills you can build a business on.In this episode:This week, we speak to Sarah about the Matchbox.io stable of skills and discuss:What it’s like maintaining 18 Alexa skillsThe Opearlo acquisitionUnique advice for people and companies just getting startedThe 3-step Matchbox.io philosophy that runs through each of its Alexa skillsEcosystems and community and how the two drive engagementISPs and how Matchbox.io is monetising Alexa skillsHow changing 1 word led to a 17% increase in conversionsHow Matchbox.io gets its skills discoveredThe potential for advertising on assistant platformsLinksMatchbox.io websiteMatchbox.io on TwitterQuestion of the dayQuestion of the day Facebook groupSarah on LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first episode of the new year is both a reflection on how far we've come in the last 12 months, and what to look forward to in the year to come. This is a special episode as it's the first of a new decade. And in this episode of the rundown, we're getting deep.  Biggest news stories of 2019:Apple acquires Pullstring - Was this an acqui-hire? Or is Apple using the Pullstring tool internally? Will we ever find out? Either way, 2019 started out with a big acquisition from a big player and showed good early signs of a growing industry.Sonos acquires Snips - Given the importance of privacy, Sonos might have struck gold with Snips, the privacy first voice tech company based in Paris. The sad thing for the industry is that Sonos will not support third party activity any longer and is keeping the tech for its own speakers.This could happen more and more as big companies realise the value of having voice technology and the talent to create and implement it. I just hope there are enough tools leftover to support the community and third party developers. Voice startup funding set to triple in 2019 Google BERT: understanding searches better than ever before, and ERNIE from Baidu, which can understand subjects and topics better than ever before, too. With these two developments on the AI front, the chances of understanding what users are asking for and being able to offer the correct response is increasing. ERNIE beats humans as far as its reading comprehension capability is concerned.Most overhyped news stories of 2019:Voice interoperability initiative - On the face of it, this sounds great. Lots of organisations joining together to create standards that will allow multiple voice assistants to run on a single device so that users can choose which assistant they'd prefer to use for a given task. In reality, given that Google and Apple aren't involved in this, will it have the benefits that it proposes? Well, perhaps if Alexa is your go-to assistant, then yes. This way, Alexa is the core assistant, but then Cortana and Einstein (Salesforce) can be used for more specific tasks. Humans review Alexa recordings - Maybe it's just because we're so deeply ingrained in the industry that I assumed that humans reviewing mismatched or failed utterances would be obvious. Seemingly, though, the public did not. I understand that users are concerned with privacy around voice assistants and that the industry needs to respond and develop trust. However, I think this story in particular, and the others that followed it, blew things out of proportion and were used as scaremongering.Most underhyped stories of 2019:Google AI runs on device - When this was announced at I/O'19, it got some coverage, but it wasn't made as big a deal of than I'd have thought. This is the kind of thing that Snips used as it's core differentiator. Now, Google can run automatic speech recognition on the device and takes Google Assistant a step closer to being a privacy-first assistant. The great Google action outage - In October, Google pulled almost all of the actions on Google Assistant offline without warning. Thousands of actions just vanished. It later transpired that it was due to a potential security risk around a phishing vulnerability, but the company didn't communicate anything to anyone, at all. The story was covered by Voicebot and that's about it. Imagine if all of the apps in the app store vanished over night, without warning. I thought it was big news that deserved more coverage. Hugging Face raised $15 million - The big two (Amazon and Google) are talked about more often than anything else. We're guilty of this ourselves sometimes. But we know that voice is about more than those two. It's about more than smart speakers. It's the interface of the future and the opportunities for using voice span well beyond the big two. And so when we see a company that is trying to build the definitive natural language processing library, that's big news. Other links we spoke about in the show:How voice assistants could change the way we shop - Kane Simms, Harvard Business ReviewTeam Say It Now finishes third in Alexa CupOren Jacob discusses conversation design on VUX World Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do NPR approach designing voice applications? And how do they engage users to make sure that they're designing the right things for the right people, Ha-Hoa Homano, Sr. Product Manager, Emerging Platforms at NPR joins us to share all.LinksRead more at npr.designLearn with npr.codesFollow Ha-Hoa on TwitterAudio player functionality suggestion on Alexa.uservoice.com (still pending) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sierra Fontana and Carissa Merrill are working hard to make the US Bank's voice services accessible to all. They join us on this episode to share how they're approaching accessibility for voice and why it's so important to prioritise accessibility early.Presented by the Conversational Academy. Save 10% on the world's no.1 online conversation design course.LinksWCAG guidelinesAll about VoiceItt with Sara SmolleyJoin Carissa Merrill and Sierra Fontana on LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Facilitating a panel discussion on voice design with Ben Sauer of Babylon Health, Charlie Cadbury of Say it Now, Jen Heap of Vixen Labs, Rozzi Meredith of Voxly and Quirine van Walt Meijer of Microsoft. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam Greenwood is the CEO of the human tech agency, Greenwood Campbell. Last year, Adam and his team trialled placing voice assistants in residential homes in the UK to see whether voice assistants can help alleviate loneliness for senior citizens.We discuss the project and the results, as well as get Adam's take on the current state of voice and what he'd like to see in 2020.Presented by the Conversational Academy. Save 10% on the world's no.1 online conversation design course.This episode was broadcast live on LinkedIn. To catch the next live broadcast, join Kane Simms on LinkedIn.LinksAdam Greenwood on LinkedInGreenwood Campbell websiteWatch the Alleviating Loneliness videoGreenwood Campbell on TwitterPodcasts referenced in this episodeAsk Marvee with Heidi CulbertsonHelping Susan with Ruby Steel and Will Merrill Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Taken from Kane's talk at the Bots, AI and Voice meet-up in London on 20 November 2019.The meet-up was ran by Roy Murphy of Synthetic. Check out the meet-up page for info on the next meet-up.Connect with me on LinkedIn to watch all future talks live, including the panel discussion on voice design at MUXL2019. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.