Where The Conversational AI Industry Becomes a Community

June 15-16, 2022  |  24 Hours  |  Virtual

The market for Conversational AI is growing exponentially across industries. Join us for 24 hours of insights and interviews about the market, where the big investments are being made, and how members of the community are driving change. VOICE Global is the best place to connect with organizations and communities from around the world.
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VOICE Global 2022 Featured Speakers Include:

 

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Rebecca Nathenson

Director of Product Management, Google Assistant Developer Platform
Google
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Greg Bennett

Director of Conversation Design
Salesforce
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Shyamala Prayaga

Senior Software Product Manager Conversational AI-Deep Learning
NVIDIA
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Sean King

Executive Vice President
Veritone
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Pete Erickson

CEO
Modev
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Maple Cheng

Head of Digital – Service Delivery, Cargo & People
Cathay Pacific
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Arte Merritt

Conversational AI Global Segment Lead
AWS
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Lisa Falkson

Senior VUI Designer
Amazon, Devices Design Group
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Sanket Shinde

AI Solutions Architect
CARIAD, A Volkswagen Group Company
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Evan Macmillan

CEO
Gridspace
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Noelle Silver

Global Partner, AI and Analytics
IBM
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Ayesha Saleem

Conversation Design Manager
Instacart

Transform the World of Customer Experience

Organizations worldwide are working hard to transform the customer experience using Conversational AI. VOICE Global 2022 is the place where you can learn from industry experts, thought leaders, and community members like you to learn where Conversational AI is headed, interesting use cases, and much more.

Join your colleagues and community to meet others who envision a world where Conversational AI and voice technology are used to improve and optimize functions of everyday business.
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Agenda

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Who's ready to get started and dive into 24 hours of insights, ideas, and where the Conversational AI ecosystem is headed. We get started with a short welcome from Pete Erickson, Modev Founder/CEO and the creator of the VOICE events, media, and more.

Pete Erickson

Pete is the founder and CEO of Modev and the creator of the VOICE series of events including VOICE Summit, Global, Talks and all related media properties.

Available in over 30 languages and 90 countries, Google Assistant is built to be the most helpful, intelligent, and voice-forward digital Assistant. In this Opening Keynote, join GA's Head of Product Management,  Rebecca Nathenson, for an exploration into the future of Google Assistant and the potential of this powerful voice technology.

Rebecca Nathenson

Rebecca works as Director of Product Management at Google. She leads the Developer Platform for Google Assistant, working to ensure that the developer experience for Assistant is intuitive, fast, and fun. Prior to Google, Rebecca led compliance and Admin product management at Box. Rebecca has also led product at Jobvite, where her team delivered deeply-researched, smartly-designed products and features for Jobvite's Engage, Hire, and Onboard products. Prior to Jobvite, Rebecca worked at NetSuite, leading first Commerce then Infrastructure product management. She also has extensive experience in driving commercial and technology innovation through product management in consumer e-commerce and retail companies, including Shutterfly, eBay, Apple, and BizRate. Rebecca received her MBA from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, and her BA in International Relations from Stanford University.

Conversational products have made leaps and bounds over the past decade, yet have made little progress in the way of making historically underrepresented minorities feel truly heard. Linguistically, "accent" and "dialect" are a direct reflection of social identity, and to truly meet users where they are, we need to account for that. In this talk, learn how to responsibly collect training data and amplify sociolinguistic diversity in your models to make your conversational products more inclusive.

Greg Bennett

Greg Bennett is Director of Conversation Design at Salesforce, where he founded and leads the company’s first dedicated Conversation Design practice since its inception. As a sociolinguist, he shepherds a product and design vision at Salesforce that helps teams across the entire product portfolio create inclusive experiences that feel natural, helpful, and meaningful, and manages an international team of Conversation Designers who work with Salesforce’s Product leaders to define the future of conversational AI.

Marlinda Galapon

Marlinda Galapon is Conversation Design Senior at Salesforce, where she leads design strategy and production for cutting-edge conversational products across the company's CRM product suite. Drawing on her experience at myriad tech companies such as Adobe, Meta, and Yahoo!, Marlinda puts fairness, rigor, and inclusion at the center of her design process, guiding teams toward developing experiences that are efficient, welcoming, and personable for her users.

Gridspace is leading the revolution to improve patient care with software to dramatically improve how Conversational AI is equally serving patients, businesses, doctors, and developers. In this lively fireside discussion, Modev CEO Pete Erickson, and Gridspace CEO Evan Macmillan will discuss the challenges in our our current patient care ecosystem, Evan's perspective about how Conversational AI and Machine Learning are changing the game for a better patient experience, and case examples of how Gridspace is leading the charge.

Evan Macmillan

Evan has been an entrepreneur most of his life. Previously, he co-founded Zappedy, a payments technology company that was backed by Eric Schmidt's venture fund and acquired by Groupon. His other technology projects have been covered by the WSJ and PBS. Evan's patents include an HCI invention and a bank infrastructure capability. He has an engineering bachelor's from Stanford in Product Design.

Pete Erickson

Pete is the founder and CEO of Modev and the creator of the VOICE series of events including VOICE Summit, Global, Talks and all related media properties.

Conversation Design is a relatively new design practice that doesn't have the tenure of user experience (UX) or user interface (UI) design. Because of its newness, most conversation designers are discovering things as they go along and there aren't many standards or documented best practices. The purpose of this talk is to give a blueprint to people looking to take their conversation design practice out of its infancy and grow it into an established principle.

Ayesha Saleem

Ayesha is a Conversation Design Manager @ Instacart where she leads the strategy for voice AI and chatbots. Prior to Instacart, Ayesha was the first Conversation Designer at Rocket Mortgage where she defined what conversation design looks like in the home loan space. Ayesha has a Masters in Human-Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Michigan and is a proud Detroit native.

Cathay Pacific Airlines has developed a world-class suite of Conversational AI-powered consumer tools, making them a leader in how to leverage voice well to create exceptional, frictionless customer experiences.

But they're also leveraging voice successfully throughout their internal organization as a company. In this fireside chat between Cathay's Head of Digital, Maple Cheng and Modev CEO will explore how Cathay Pacific is using Conversational AI to serve internal teams and departments across the company. You'll walk away with some great ideas for incorporating CAI into your own company's structure and strategic planning.

Maple Cheng

Bio to come.

Pete Erickson

Pete is the founder and CEO of Modev and the creator of the VOICE series of events including VOICE Summit, Global, Talks and all related media properties.

Interactive voice is now largely synonymous with consumer adoption of smart speakers and other devices. We mostly do our talking through the Big Three platforms: Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant. These "Voice 1.0" experiences have served as valuable incubators for bringing voice into the mainstream – consumers are now well-acclimated to talking to objects, and brands got their feet wet with basic two-way voice communication and advertising touchpoints.

But both brands and customers are now ready to expand beyond the Voice 1.0 era. It’s time to open the doors for the direct brand-consumer voice experiences that will fuel and define Voice 2.0 (and actually enable brands to be *creative* with voice. For voice experiences to evolve, brands require direct and flexible control to customize their interactions, independent of any other companies’ policies and roadmaps.

The snowballing momentum toward Voice 2.0 adoption is powered by brands’ recognition of voice’s unique advantages and particularly open possibilities. Comparing interfaces, speaking is (at least) three times faster than typing. And, when it comes to collecting qualitative feedback, nothing is faster or better than getting customers talking. Unlike “likes” or other brand engagement that lacks specificity, voice feedback channels capture all the nuanced and insightful details a consumer wishes to express aloud. Brands today miss out on tremendously valuable feedback that customers are eager to share, only because no efficient communication mechanism is available. Suggestions or complaints customers currently keep to themselves – rather than waiting to speak with managers or call center representatives – will reach brands with Voice 2.0, when every brand touchpoint offers instant attention and encourages customers to be as verbose as they like.

This talk will discuss how the emergence of Voice 2.0 is functionally and fundamentally different from Voice 1.0 and how it affects brands and consumers.

Stas Tushinskiy

Stas Tushinskiy is the CEO of Instreamatic, based in Palo Alto, California. Prior to Instreamatic, Stas built a leading digital audio advertising sales house in Europe, working closely with Tier 1 brands like Porsche, Starbucks, and McDonalds, as well as global ad agencies including OMD and Mindshare. He's a contributing writer to several voice, marketing and advertising industry publications, including Radio & Internet News, MyCustomer, Podcast Business Journal, Mobile Marketing, and Marketing Magazine.

Having seen 90 billion chatbot and voice messages over thousands of conversational interfaces and use cases, Arte Merritt will discuss best practices in conversational AI, including how to get started building NLP models, the role of context and personalization, handling fallbacks, integrating with back-end systems, and testing, monitoring, and measurement.

Arte Merritt

Arte Merritt leads Conversational AI partnerships at AWS. He was the co-founder and CEO of Dashbot, a leading analytics platform for chatbots and voice assistants, which he led to 20,000 customers, 90 billion messages processed, and multiple acquisition offers. He is a frequent author and speaker on conversational AI and data insights. Previously, he founded Motally, a mobile analytics platform he sold to Nokia. Arte is an MIT alum

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is using Alexa to give Australians quick, 24/7 updates about any fires, floods, storms and more near their specific town or suburb. Conversation designer Michael Collett will tell you how his team used natural language generation to power the ABC Emergency voice app, automatically creating short natural language news summaries for every emergency event in the country and updating them every 5 minutes. He will also talk about where the technology could be taken next, including the potential to add hyperlocal news to audio news streams on smart speakers.

Michael Collet

Michael Collett joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as a journalist in 2008 and first became involved in conversation design in 2016 as one of the creators of the ABC News chatbot on Messenger. He switched to conversation design full-time in 2020 in order to create a voice app for ABC Emergency, among other CUI projects.

Covid has deeply changed the health industry's propensity to adopt Conversational AI. The talk will share how Curious Thing has seen the health industry adopt new Voice AI use cases such as covid patient at home management, patient waitlist management and covid long research. The patients journey use cases for Voice AI are expanding and David will expand on emerging use cases.

David McKeague

David is a Co-Founder of Curious Thing which is leading the way you engage with your customers using voice-based conversational AI. David is serial tech entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building technology businesses.

Human flaws are usually an unconsidered factor when it comes to testing. We are not only “being humans” when we hit a typo in a written text. Voice assistants should also function flawlessly even in case of a non-perfectly recorded sound. In this talk, we will introduce some best practices, the most common challenges and some hands-on experience on how to provide quality to your voice assistant even in a changing environment. The intention in testing for real-life scenarios, such as low quality voice, background noise, different accents etc. is not to test the system behavior in separate situations, but to simulate the realistic usage the voice bot will be facing with. A stable response in different circumstances becomes a matter of delivering quality and consistency.

Christoph Börner

In a few words - entrepreneur, developer, tester, keynote speaker and drummer. Active member and organizer in the testing community. Deep interest in artificial intelligence, machine learning and chatbots from day one. Close friendship with Florian, even after playing in the same rock band for several years :). Started together developing the open source Botium Core in 2018 to reinvent automated testing for chatbots. Today Botium can be considered as the first choice for testing and training conversational AI.

In a world where we are bombarded by information, what can neuro research tell us about how organisations – through the use of conversation – can better cut through to their customers and drive commerce?

This talk will unveil a number of findings from the neuro research study and highlight the benefits of using conversation as part of audio advertising. It will show how having a ‘conversation’ with a brand fires up the memory parts of the brain by providing context – meaning the message is retained for longer and the campaign gets more ‘attention’.

Through Charlie’s address, delegates will take away a number of scientific insights to inform their next marketing campaign – while understanding why conversation must be a part of it. They will learn about the latest conversational technology within the world of audio advertising and commerce, and hear more about what the future holds as the number of smart tech devices in our homes increases. This talk will provoke the thoughts of delegates and leave them wanting to learn more about the role that conversation will play in the future of audio advertising.

Charlie Cadbury

Charlie Cadbury has been building businesses in emerging technologies for the past 20 years. Having sold his first website in 1999 he went on to found a software business, putITout, growing that organically to a 45 person team and overseeing the creation of over 350 digital products for clients like BBC, RBS and Boeing.

Since 2015 Charlie has been working exclusively with Conversational AI. In 2015 he co-founded the multi award winning conversational platform www.dazzle.ai, which among other things became the the first Alexa based concierge tested by Marriott Hotels.

Charlie founded Say It Now with Sander Siezen in 2018 to create the platforms required to harness the value created by the voice channel. They have gone on to work with innovative multi-nationals, are UK & EU Alexa Cup holders and recently announced a global ‘Media First’ delivering actionable audio advertising campaigns that allow consumers to purchase goods directly from an audio advert.

The Internet of Things has increased among residential consumers. The main drivers for the growth of smart home market will be video doorbells, voice-assisted technologies, and surveillance systems due to the growing increase in consumer demand.

Meanwhile, the world is aging rapidly. Elderly people want to live healthy and active in their homes; however, this population presents key challenges with smart homes. Most of the smart things targeting elderly population is focused on improving the Quality of Life rather provide a seamless and learning ecosystem for breaking their fears with technology.

We will discuss a personal assistant that allows the users to learn how to work with smart sensors, giving them different contexts to test, use, learn and at the same time to keep active and update regarding the next generation of homes. This personal assistant will promote voice interface and learning in the following contexts: to control television and router; to control lights; and to care their plants.

Joana Sousa

Joana Sousa holds an MSc in Biomedical Engineering with expertise in the areas of biosignal processing, innovation management and marketing strategy. Currently, she is Innovation Consultant at NOS Innovation, a Portuguese telecommunications company, and an independent expert in the European Community’s H2020 framework, which provides funding for research and innovation. She was Innovation sub-director at Edge Innovation, leading innovative projects and managing innovation in the Health, IT, communications areas, and R&D project coordinator at PLUX–Wireless Biosignals, AS.

To truly move beyond simple FAQ-Bots or command-and-control voice interfaces requires a new approach to Conversational AI. Over the last few years, we have promoted a paradigm shift towards Charismatic Digital Assistants in order to reach the highest level of brand-customer interactions. In this talk, we will look at the underlying reasons why charismatic assistants create added value for companies. Even more, we tackle the question why other approaches might fail altogether in areas like customer service or conversational commerce.

Dr. Christoph Essenger

Dr. Christoph Essinger is a strong believer in the “Age of Assistants” — digital assistants becoming an indispensable connector between brands and their customers. What could be an easier way to start interacting with a brand than to just speak your wishes and questions out loud?

Dr. Essinger has extensive experience in consultancy for companies on their way into the Age of Assistants. With his team, he helps brands discover the strategic potential of starting a true conversation with their customers, work out the way to get there efficiently, and navigate the challenges along the way.

His special passion lies in building unique teams that are suited for tackling the challenges of this new age. 

The growth of the conversational AI market presents a unique market opportunity for enterprises to earn user trust by implementing secure voice services that protect user data. In contrast, due to the alarming increase in data breaches worldwide, many people have lost confidence in any business’s ability to protect their data.

As a result, many consumers are reluctant to share their data with companies. Enterprises need access to consumer data for commercial purposes to create sustainable business value – for their employees and customers. Solving security problems with new standards, principles, and data infrastructure that makes conversational AI secure is critical to accelerating enterprise adoption of voice services.

Ed Sewell

Ed Sewell is an AI security technology pioneer. Ed is the CEO and Founder of Velocity AI - a global artificial intelligence company. Our mission is to build trust in AI to accelerate economic growth for everyone. Velocity is a partner of the Linux Foundation - Open Voice Network - helping move the conversational AI market forward faster. Velocity collaborates with the Open Voice Network to co-create new security standards and technologies for conversational AI. Ed is the inventor of the Mobile Health ID security protocol. The Mobile Health ID allows mothers in sub-Saharan Africa to access health care and immunization services for their newborns. Ed was also the Founder and Chief Architect of Virtual DNA - a global Biometric and Embedded AI security firm.

Tune in for an in-depth tutorial session from the expert Dev and Design team at Google Assistant.


Description to come.

Alex Serdiuk

Alex founded Respeecher with Dmytro Bielievtsov and Grant Reaber in 2018. Since then the team has been focused on high-fidelity voice cloning. Their technology was the first synthetic speech adopted by big Hollywood productions, starting from 2019. Alex is in charge of Business Development and Strategy. Their primary focus is improving the voice cloning technology in several directions, including the tech democratization to let sound professionals and creators all over the world have the fine tool in their acquaintance. Respeecher works in Feature films and TV projects, Video Games, Animation studios, Localization, media agencies, Healthcare, and others

The adoption of voice devices has started to level out. But this does not mean that voice is dead -- in fact quite the opposite. Consumers have demonstrated they want voice, but the way it is used today is frustrating. In this talk, Tobias will dive into why that is and how we can course correct to create voice as the medium of choice.

Tobias Dengel

Tobias Dengel is CEO of WillowTree, LLC. a leading mobile strategy, design and app development company servicing Fortune 500/5000 clients and large government agencies. He is a seasoned technology executive with 20+ years experience in Mobility, Digital Media and Interactive Marketing.

TalkSocket started out providing Amazon Alexa portability and continues to evolve as a bridge to voice assistance with individual brands and other organizations. In this session Talkgo's CEO, Chandler Murch, discusses his company's product journey and evolution as part of future interactive scenarios.

Chandler Murch

Chandler Murch is the CEO/Co-Founder of TalkGo. His background is in managing IT business operations for Valve Software, known for it billion dollar distribution platform, Steam and Promethean, a global leader in front-of-class education hardware. His work experience in hardware and software have set him up for an exciting ride to make TalkGo a huge success.

Whether your organization has a voice app or you're just getting started in the space, there's never been a better time to design, build, and deploy custom voice assistants. The technology is continuously becoming more intelligent, better integrated, and more valuable while the cost and complexity of delivery go down.

Sanket Shinde, Volkswagen Voice AI Solutions Architect, and Alex Dunn, Voicify Chief Product Officer, will share their experiences creating custom voice assistants in this session. They'll also unpack how Volkswagen employed a custom voice assistant to extend the functionality of EV series vehicles and share insights for getting on top of the latest in voice trendsa

Alex Dunn

Alex Dunn leads the product team at Voicify and is the founder of Enabled Play. He's also a Microsoft MVP, PubConf Champion, Bixby Premier Developer, and AWS Alexa SME. His background in accessibility, application development, and conversational AI has leaned into enabling applications to do more for businesses and consumers using scalable architectures and design, distributed services, cloud infrastructure, and innovative edge technologies. Alex does his best to remain platform agnostic in his practices and development with specialties in C#, Kotlin, and TypeScript while building for cross-platform compatibility. You might find him co-organizing the Boston Mobile C# Meetup with Microsoft, speaking at all sorts of conferences and events around the world, streaming on Twitch, and on Pluralsight. You can read his regular tips and thoughts in the development community at https://alexdunn.org/ or watch him live at https://twitch.tv/suave_pirate .

Outside technology, you can find him playing guitar, working with animal rescue, or exploring the great outdoors.

Sanket Shinde

Sanket Shinde is the Voice AI Solutions Architect at CARIAD, a Volkswagen Group Company. A self-described technology and math enthusiast, his background is in data science and research. Sanket received his Master of Science at Technische Universität Darmstadt in Information and Communications Engineering, with a focus on Machine Learning and AI, and a Bachelor of Engineering at the University of Mumbai in Electronics and Communications Engineering. When Sanket's not innovating the driver experience, he's most likely playing the drums or bouldering.

With the emergence of Web 3.0, there is a massive shift in motion —away from a few large players controlling the Web to a more democratic, decentralized paradigm. If you have been seeing the buzz about Web3 but are still getting to know the ecosystem We've got you covered.

In this dynamic session, Noelle Silver — Global Partner, AI and Analytics for IBM — will break it down for you. She'll cover the principles of Web3, why it will be next major industry revolution, and how businesses should be thinking about Web3 integrations in your long term strategic planning.

Noelle Silver

Noelle Silver is an AI evangelist and futurist. She is a multi-award-winning technologist who specializes in cloud computing, conversational AI, digital transformation, and Responsible AI Practices. She has also helped hundreds of brands develop strategies for voice platforms such as Amazon Alexa. She is passionate about Mindful Leadership, authentic personal branding, and the ethical and responsible use of technology in business. She has spent many years as a leader, trainer, and evangelist for companies like IBM/RedHat, VMWare, NPR and Amazon. She has taught thousands of people the value and importance of digital transformation and mindful leadership and has delivered keynotes, workshops and conferences around the world.

Tune in for this awesome discussion between Amazon's Senior VUI Design expert, Lisa Falkson and AI evangelist extraordinaire, Noelle Silver (currently leading global AI strategies at IBM). The two will dive into the future of Voice, Web3 and more, and leave time for audience Q&A so you can join in the fun!

Lisa Falkson

Lisa Falkson is currently Senior VUI Designer at Amazon, leading a team of VUI designers covering Alexa Communication, FireTV, and new multimodal devices. She is the editor and author of “Ubiquitous Voice: Essays from the Field” and has over 20 years of industry and research experience, specializing in the design, development and deployment of natural speech and multimodal interfaces. Her most recent work includes next-generation voice user interfaces at NIO and CloudCar, as well as Amazon’s first speech-enabled products: Fire TV, Fire Phone and Echo/Alexa. Prior to that, she focused on early iPad/iPhone interfaces at Volio, and speech-enabled IVR applications at Nuance. Lisa holds a BSEE from Stanford, and an MSEE from UCLA.

Noelle Silver

Noelle Silver is an AI evangelist and futurist. She is a multi-award-winning technologist who specializes in cloud computing, conversational AI, digital transformation, and Responsible AI Practices. She has also helped hundreds of brands develop strategies for voice platforms such as Amazon Alexa. She is passionate about Mindful Leadership, authentic personal branding, and the ethical and responsible use of technology in business. She has spent many years as a leader, trainer, and evangelist for companies like IBM/RedHat, VMWare, NPR and Amazon. She has taught thousands of people the value and importance of digital transformation and mindful leadership and has delivered keynotes, workshops and conferences around the world.

Through Veritone's suite of industry-leading synthetic voice, AI, data, and analytics solutions, they're disrupting and changing the face of media and advertising as we know it. It's an exciting time. In this fireside chat, Veritone SVP, Sean King, and Modev CEO will dive into how Conversational AI and synthetiic voice are changing the game for how companies can reach and understand their customers better — now and in the future.

Sean King

Sean King oversees the commercial services division at Veritone including managed services for advertising, licensing, and synthetic media. His forward-thinking marketing and operational insights have solidified Veritone’s subsidiary, Veritone One as the leading AI-powered audio and influencer advertising agency in the world, and has grown Veritone Licensing as North America’s premiere AI-based content licensing firm — setting the stage to take on the next frontier of synthetic media with Veritone Voice. Over the past 20 years, Sean has held various senior level management positions focusing on sales management, technology operations, and strategic partnership development. He is passionate about finding new ways to refine operations, create new opportunities, and applying practical uses of AI and synthetic media to the metaverse.

Pete Erickson

Pete is the founder and CEO of Modev and the creator of the VOICE series of events including VOICE Summit, Global, Talks and all related media properties.

Speech technologies like speech recognition, natural language understanding and text to speech are the backbone of any conversational AI system today, be it a voicebot, chatbot or IVR in the customer care world. The industry is putting a lot of effort into improving these technologies for the end-users. However, still, they fall short in many instances and scenarios, leading to biases and frustrations. This talk will discuss humanizing speech technologies for a better enterprise world.

Shyamala Prayaga

Shyamala is a seasoned conversational AI expert. Having led initiatives across connected home, automotive, and wearables - just to name a few, she's put her work on research into usability, accessibility, speech recognition, and multimodal voice user interfaces and has even been published internationally across publications like Forbes. Outside of her research, she's spent the last 18 years designing mobile, web, desktop, and smart TV interfaces and has most recently joined NVIDIA to own their roadmap for speech AI solutions.

Voice is a natural fit in the car as it helps users get things done in a simple, seamless & hands-free way. Learn how you can surface your content on Android for cars via App Actions. App Actions let users launch and control Android apps with their voice, using Google Assistant

Madhukar Srivastava

Madhukar is a product manager on the Google Assistant team working on the Assistant Integration Platform building products that help developers create voice first experiences across surfaces. At Google he has also worked across the Assistant on Auto, Next Billion Users, and Ads teams. Prior to Google, Madhukar was a co-founder at a few startups and has multiple patents in his name. He's an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and loves spending time with his kids and pursuing his passion of playing cricket and acoustic guitar.

Jessica Dene Earley-Cha

Jessica Den eEarley-Cha (she/her) is a Developer Relations Engineer for Google Assistant. She has been teaching developers how to build voice applications and App Actions for over 3 years. She enjoys connecting with developers and future developers. Jessica is @WomenInVoice Advocate, former @WomenTechmakers & @gdg lead, former @girldevelopit & @Hackbright teacher. Before attending a software bootcamp in 2015, Jessica worked in the non-profit sector for over 10 years, working primarily with at-risk female youths and adults with mental health challenges.

Voice technology is transforming the digital revolution across industries from automotive to hospitality, retail, and much more. As conversational AI solutions proliferate, users expect to interact with these platforms in any context. For all of voice technology’s promise, it remains clumsy and still sometimes falls short of the “human standard.”

In use cases where we expect a person to be able to hear and understand speech, we inherently expect our voice assistants to be able to hear and understand us in the same conditions. Instead, many voice technologies still have difficulties with noisy environments and even more so with distinguishing different voices in a crowded room.

As voice AI platforms become more robust, their dependency on clean data becomes more important. Accuracy in extracting voice metadata like intent, speaker ID, emotion, and health markers are all dependent on capturing the cleanest voice signal possible. Every great voice experience starts with world-class signal processing.

If we’re going to unlock the potential of voice and all of its valuable data, we need solutions designed for the real world that can extract high-quality, machine-recognizable voice data. Join us for a presentation with leading voice partners and learn how they are evolving voice technology into the next generation and what that means for companies and brands with the foresight to take advantage.

Ken Sutton

Ken is a serial entrepreneur who has leveraged nearly 20 years of strategy, product development, and business management experience to build a company from IP he co-authored with Dr. Hamid Nawab, a renowned researcher, engineer (PhD, MIT ’82) and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. His company was the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to conduct research and development work on voice technologies whose performance in speech and speaker recognition does not significantly degrade due to the presence of interfering voices or environmental sounds.

Voice is at an inflection point. On the consumer side, will the future be limited largely to music, weather, and wake-up calls? On the enterprise side, could the future be locked inside the data firewall, a tool for customer service but little more? If we can imagine a world wide voice web -- with its promise of exponential growth in adoption, use, and value -- we must ask: what will it truly take to get there? Please join Jon Stine, Executive Director of the Open Voice Network for a thought-provoking session.

Jon Stine

Jon Stine is the Executive Director and founder of the Open Voice Network. Prior to founding OVN, Stine was global director of retail sales at Intel and a director of North American retail at Cisco. He has an MS in telecommunications from the University of Oregon.

Conversational AI involves conceiving and raising AI-powered Assistants to help Consumers and Enterprises be more productive and achieve meaningful business and personal outcomes. AI Assistants accomplish repetitive, well-defined tasks so we humans can focus on higher cognition-based tasks, which is where we do meaningful, creative and satisfying work. AI Assistants need to be raised with Economic, Emotional and Ethical Intelligence in equal parts.

To accomplish this successfully, Conversational AI desperately needs the full spectrum of the human race : all colors, genders and socio-economic backgrounds to reflect humanity which in turn drives capitalistic success. The enabling technology to birth AI Assistants has gotten really, really good where it is already replacing for example, customer service agents in Contact Centers - as much as 30% of staff are being planned to be let go just for starters.

In parallel, Enterprises are facing a talent crisis to plan, build and run AI Assistants - it has never been more critical to consider the human side of the AI equation in the accelerating world of the Age of Automation which has arrived.

Joti Balani

Joti Balani, founder of Freshriver.ai, is a creative architect designing and delivering complex enterprise, human and systemic transformations with her multidimensional framework blending AI, Data Science, Engineering and Social Sciences. She leads transformative innovations at Fortune 100 enterprises to create emotional, economic and brand value with her team, who represent the empowered human race in all dimensions.

This session will be about how to design sound effectively for voice experiences. I will talk about why sound affects people so much and the fact that we insert context and emotion into conversations without thinking about it. When voice actors are used to record voice experiences, that context and emotion comes naturally. However, if a synthetic voice is used for a voice experience, aspects of the sound such as rhythm, tone, pitch, speed, and volume have to be manipulated in order to make it sound more human and conversational. I would love to use my violin to demonstrate each individual aspect so people can hear the subtle differences in the sound. The goal of this talk is for people to gain a better understanding of how to create emotional connections to customers and why choosing the right sound is crucial for a successful voice experience.

Emily Banzhaf

Emily is a content designer at WillowTree, conversation/VUI designer, and professional violinist. She co-moderates the Ethical Use Task Force at the Open Voice Network and co-hosts the Voice Spark Live podcast. Engagements include speaking about voice ethics at VoiceTech Summit Americas and featuring as a Voicefluencer on "The Voice Den." Awards include winning the Digital Assistant Academy's Hackabot 2021.

Between 2019 and 2021, revenue in the global eSports industry increased by 13%, from ~$960B to ~$1.05B and is projected to reach ~$1.62B by 2024. Earnings can be lucrative for individuals and teams who engage in competitive eSports and for gaming companies and event sponsors; however, the population who has access to those benefits is quite homogenous.

Women, people from racially and ethnically minoritized identities, people with disabilities and people from low-income backgrounds have been historically excluded as competitors and in the industry. Addressing systemic barriers so those who have been historically marginalized are able to engage equitably can increase diversity in eSports and gaming, leading to improved innovation, teamwork, problem solving and social mobility.

The eSports and Gaming Department at The University of Texas at Dallas was launched in 2018 and is already among the Top 10 in the nation according to BestColleges.com. Students on the varsity teams are considered student-athletes and receive athletic benefits, including scholarships. In an effort to bring more diversity to UTD’s award-winning programs, Athletics is partnering with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on initiatives to remove barriers to equity in eSports. Join UT Dallas Athletic Director Angela Marin and Dr. Yvette E. Pearson, Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for a fireside chat about some of those initiatives and more broadly, equitable engagement in eSports.

Yvette E. Pearson, Ph.D

Dr. Yvette E. Pearson is Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at the University of Texas at Dallas. A Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Pearson is recognized globally for over 25 years in higher education, particularly for her work to advance sustainability, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. Her efforts have led to over $30M in funding for initiatives to support DEI in STEM and changes to policies and practices of global engineering organizations. Among her awards and honors are ABET's Claire L. Felbinger Award for Diversity and Inclusion, ASCE's Professional Practice Ethics and Leadership Award, the Society of Women Engineers’ Distinguished Engineering Educator Award, and ASCE’s President’s Medal, one of the organization’s highest honors. Pearson is a registered Professional Engineer, a Commissioner on ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission, and host of Engineering Change Podcast, which has audiences in over 70 countries on six continents.

Angela Marin

Angela Marin serves as the Director of Athletics for UT Dallas. In October 2021, she became the first Hispanic woman to lead a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III (D-III) athletic program. Marin joined UT Dallas in 2012. She leads a team of over 50 staff members and 450+ student athletes. She has worked with the American Southwest Conference (ASC) in the league’s development and she wrote the by-laws and best practices for their compliance directors group. Marin is a member of the NCAA D-III Management Council, the highest position available for a non-president in the division. She received the NADIIIAA Emerging Athletic Administrator Award in 2017, became an NCAA Pathway Graduate in 2021, is an active member of Women Leaders in College Sports and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics and is serving a four-year appointment on the NCAA D-III Management Council.

Description to come.


Pete Erickson

Pete is the founder and CEO of Modev and the creator of the VOICE series of events including VOICE Summit, Global, Talks and all related media properties.

What a fantastic time it's been! After all of the amazing conversations and insights, Pete takes us home with some reflections and look at the exciting VOICE things to come this year.

Pete Erickson

Pete is the founder and CEO of Modev and the creator of the VOICE series of events including VOICE Summit, Global, Talks and all related media properties.
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Reasons to Attend VOICE Global

Join the voice technology community as we gather, virtually, for an inside look at how brands from around the world, incorporate voice and Conversational AI into their business.

  • Learn about the latest developments in the voice technology and Conversational AI industry.
  • Connect with communities and organizations from around the world.
  • Discover ways you can stand out and advance your career.
  • Get a first-hand look at up-and-coming solutions using Conversational AI.
  • Join from the comfort of your own home or office.
  • This event is free, join virtually with your colleagues or community members.

VOICE Global is beneficial for many professionals in a variety of roles and industries. This summit will have learning opportunities, industry analysis, and new product information for executives, developers, marketers, content creators, tech leaders designers, media, analysts, and investors in healthcare, fintech, education, retail, entertainment, and more.

VOICE Global 2022 Sponsors

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SoundHound Inc

At SoundHound Inc., we believe every brand should have a voice. As a leading innovator of conversational technologies, we’re trusted by companies around the globe, including Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Snapchat, Mastercard, and Deutsche Telekom. Houndify, our independent voice AI platform, allows developers to build custom voice assistants with a branded wake word for any product or service. Our proprietary Speech-to-Meaning® engine delivers unprecedented speed and accuracy. Our mission: To enable humans to interact with the things around them like we interact with each other—by speaking naturally.

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Voiceflow

Over 60,000 designers, developers, and teams use Voiceflow to design, develop, and launch conversational experiences with little to no code. Design & document powerful prototypes, collaborate with your team, or export seamlessly to your developer – all within your Voiceflow canvas. Whether you're building for Alexa, Google Assistant, IVR, iOT, chatbots or anything in between, Voiceflow will help you get to prototype – faster.

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AudioBurst

Audioburst, the Audio Search and Delivery Platform, makes audio content accessible to users, whenever they want it and wherever they are. A powerful suite of API and SDK solutions enable app developers, web publishers, automotive companies, and device makers to tap into the world’s largest indexed library of fresh talk audio content. Adding a layer of informative, entertaining, and inspiring short-form audio content streams increases the user experience and introduces new monetization opportunities for Audioburst partners such as Hyundai, Samsung, and Flipboard.

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Openstream.ai

Openstream is a leading conversational AI platform provider, that helps enterprises enable sophisticated digital interactions for enhanced user experiences and productivity gains using Eva™, its Enterprise Virtual Assistant platform. With Eva, enterprises can scale operations, automate business processes, and reduce costs by developing and deploying voice-based AI solutions-that augment human intelligence through data-driven insights.

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Speech Morphing

Speechmorphing is a global AI speech technology company revolutionizing human-machine communications with personalized and uniquely branded synthetic voices. Our products and services deliver natural and human-like voices to broaden accessibility and accelerate the proliferation of synthesized speech for real world applications. Speechmorphing works closely with developers of conversational AI applications, customer experience (CX) and digital assistant platforms, wearables, and IoT devices to innovate simple yet sophisticated and cost-effective voice solutions for global markets. Speechmorphing is headquartered in San Jose, California, with offices in Israel and Europe.

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SoapBox Labs

SoapBox is on a mission to radically transform how kids interact with technology using their voices. Our low-code, independent, and proprietary technology delivers 95% accuracy for kids ages 2 - 12 of all dialects and accents. The SoapBox voice engine has been built using a privacy-by-design approach. Protecting kids’ fundamental right to voice data privacy is a cornerstone of our company mission and philosophy. SoapBox Labs leverages the same underlying voice engine to address our two core market offerings: SoapBox Educate and SoapBox Play.

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Blutag

Blutag Inc is a cloud based technology platform for retailers to serve their customers using voice interactions. Blutag’s technology offers the shopper a personalized experience through voice activated smart speakers such as Amazon’s Echo (Alexa) and Google Home. Blutag has built a cloud based platform that can work seamlessly with any sized business. It has a template driven model that can interface with existing technology that a retailer has and get them up and running quickly. The platform uses Artificial Intelligence that can take existing data from a retailer, combine that with users shopping behavior to deliver a one-on-one personalized experience.

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Haptik

Haptik is one of the world's largest Conversational AI companies, having reached over 100 million devices and processed over 3Bn conversations. Part of the $65 billion Internet conglomerate Reliance Jio Platforms, Haptik enables Fortune 500 brands globally to enhance customer experience while saving costs and increasing revenue. Featured as a leader across many platforms including Gartner, AI Time Journal, Opus Research & more. Haptik's leading clients and partners include KFC, Oyo Rooms, Starhub, HP, Tata Group, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance among others.

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Keen Research

Keen Research develops SDKs for on-device automatic speech recognition on devices running iOS, Android, Linux, or ChromeOS operating systems. The SDK uses state-of-the-art speech recognition engine based on Deep Neural Networks at its core, and it includes a variety of acoustic models. Speech recognition is performed locally on the device, providing COPPA, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance and enterprise security by design. This also allows deployment of voice-based products in environments where internet access is not available or not reliable.

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Google Assistant

Google Assistant is an artificial intelligence–powered virtual assistant developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and smart home devices. Unlike the company's previous virtual assistant, Google Now, the Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations.

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Diamond Sponsor

HeyGoogle

Platinum Sponsor

Veritone

Gold Sponsor

Gridspace

Silver Sponsors

Voicify
Deepgram
Amazon Alexa

Bronze Sponsors

WillowTree
Symbl
Speechmatics

2022 Media & Partners

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