Future Ear Radio

Guest: Carl Robinson, CEO of Rumble Studio and Host of the Voice Tech Podcast

Topic: Rumble Studio: Creating Better Audio Production Tools

Carl joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss what he and his team are building at Rumble Studio and have a broad-based conversation about the innovation occurring in the audio production space. As the two discuss, audio is in its infancy as a medium and like any form of media is undergoing a significant transformation as it matures. We're seeing this in real-time as new audio formats are being introduced and popularized, such as social audio. 

What Carl's team is aiming to build is a platform that enables asynchronous podcast production, enabling an entirely new format of audio production. With Rumble, creators are able to generate a full podcast episode through an asynchronous exchange between host and guest(s), allowing for each side to incrementally build out the conversation, in their own time. As Carl and Dave discuss, this type of format lends itself to a number of interesting possibilities that live podcasting isn't well situated for, ultimately agreeing that we're entering into a new era of audio with a variety of new formats of content emerging.

Transcript: here

Guest: Brad Stewart, AuD - Owner of ClearLife Hearing Care; Co-Founder of AuDflow

Topic: Leveling Up the Hearing Care Experience 

Brad joins Dave this week to share his experience of working in private practice audiology for the last 10 years and how he views the evolution underway in the hearing health industry. They discuss Brad's hearing care consulting company, AuDflow, which is designed to help practices re-think their total patient experience - physical & digital - using a variety of innovative tools and services. 

For independent private practitioners competing against a slew of new competitors, from an increasing amount of big-box retailers to online sellers, it's important to match parity when it comes to the things that the new competition does well, such as digital marketing and automation. As the two discuss, the key to success into the future might be a combination of blending the things that are appealing of the new competition, with the non-commodifiable expertise inherent from one's education. It's then a matter of properly fusing the two together to create an overall patient experience that's harder and harder for the new competition to replicate or differentiate from themselves. 

Transcript: here

Guest: Angela Alexander, AuD - Owner of Auditory Processing Network and APDsupport.com

Topic: The Journey to Presenting about Auditory Processing Disorder at TEDx

Angela joins Dave on the podcast this week to share her journey of preparing for and ultimately presenting at TedX around Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). Angela describes how she landed the opportunity, the ups and downs that went along with preparing, the watershed moment that led to her piecing her talk together, and how everything culminated together to present a killer presentation. 

Angela's Audiology passion revolves around APD, and during this conversation, she shares the key points that she communicated through her talk and why APD is such an important facet to the future of Audiology. 

Guest: Andy Bellavia - Director of Market Development at Knowles Corp

Topic: A New Era in Hearing Loss Solutions

Andy joins Dave on the podcast this week to discuss the continually evolving hearables and hearing health landscape. The two discuss the recent presidential executive order that urges the FDA to accelerate its timeline with issuing its over-the-counter hearing aid guidelines, and discuss why what's happening in the hearables space might ultimately supersede the OTC hearing aid act. 

The two go into depth about the three headed beast that stands in the way of hearing solution adoption - price, stigma and friction - and how each are systematically being chipped away at by technological innovation. In addition, Andy and Dave discuss BragiOS - a hearable-specific operating system - and the recent partnerships that Bragi has announced pertaining to BragiOS.

Finally, the two discuss the impact of voice technology to the long-term hearables trajectory, and the way that CEO's at Bragi, MiMi, Skullcandy, and Audioburst are all thinking about voice's role with hearables into the future.

Transcript: here

Guest: Brian Taylor, AuD - Director of Clinical Content Development at Signia

Topic: The Upside of the Increasing Amount of Hearing Solution Optionality

Brian joins Dave this week on the podcast to continue the recent string of conversations based around the evolving hearing health landscape. The two discuss where devices like Signia's Active hearing aids fit into the market, which look like earbuds but function as hearing aids. In addition, the two discuss how we're moving toward a future where it will be harder and harder to distinguish between hearing aids and hearables, which may ultimately play a significant role in the reduction of stigma.

Guests: Dr. Kim Cavitt, Owner of Audiology Resources; Geoff Cooling, Co-Founder and Editor of Hearing Aid Know

Topic: How Hearing Professionals Can Thrive in an Expanding Hearing Health Market

Kim and Geoff join Dave on the podcast this week to continue the discussions had on the podcast recently about the accelerating pace of change occurring in the hearing health market. The three discuss all the recent announcements (Bose's hearing aid, Jabra's hearing aid, Sonova + Sennheiser, Jacoti + Qualcomm, & Apple's "Conversation Boost") and discuss how hearing professionals can insert themselves properly into the burgeoning mild-moderate side of the market. 

As Kim describes, the key might ultimately revolve around the idea of serving as a "navigator" on the patients' hearing aid journey, which might ultimately not include device sales, but rather compensation through services. Therefore, the three discuss how professionals will need to alter their revenue models and service delivery models in order to participate in this portion of the market.

Guest: Carolina Milanesi - President & Principal Analyst at Creative Strategies; Founder of Heart of Tech

Topic: Google + Samsung + Fitbit = A True Apple Watch Competitor?

Carolina joins Dave this week on the podcast to discuss the news coming out of Google's I/O developer conference that Samsung and Google will be merging their smartwatch platforms (Samsung's Tizen and Google's Wear OS) into a unified smartwatch platform, Wear. As the two discuss, when you factor in Google's acquisition of Fitbit in January of 2021, what we're really seeing now is essentially Google, Samsung and Fitbit banding together and pooling their resources to combat Apple's dominance of the smartwatch sector.

Google provides it's operating system, first party applications (i.e. Maps & YouTube Music), and Google Assistant, while Samsung provides its core competence - excellent hardware manufacturing and device proliferation, and Fitbit brings the unique use cases built around Fitness and health.

As Carolina describes, this trio of companies unified together in a cohesive offering might finally offer a truly compelling Android smartwatch option that has the potential to scale and compete head-to-head with the Apple Watch. As the two discuss, the Android ecosystem desperately needs adequate peripheral devices to complement the android handsets, as Apple's ecosystem continues to deepen its moat and switching costs via its wearables and services.

Finally, the two talk through the broader implications of these moves, especially as it relates to the future of all wearable devices, including hearables and AR glasses, and the unique preventative health use cases that wearables continue to migrate toward.

Transcript: here

Guests: Abram Bailey, AuD - CEO of Hearing Tracker; Steve Taddei, AuD - Professor at Rock Valley College, Audiologist at Center for Sight & Hearing, and Host of the Hearing Tracker Podcast

Topic: The Hearing Health Market Heats Up: Sonova + Sennheiser & Bose Hearing Aids

Abram and Steve make their debut on the podcast to help break down the recent news of Sonova buying Sennheiser's consumer audio division and Bose introducing its self-fit hearing aids to the market. The three talk through the big picture of what's currently underway in the hearing health industry, what to expect in the short-term, and how hearing professionals can insert themselves into the burgeoning world of mild-moderate solutions in a meaningful and practical way. 

In addition, Abram and Steve share the backstory of The Hearing Tracker Podcast and why they decided to pivot the show to a more, NPR-style themed format, and talk about the growing ecosystem of creators in this industry. 

Guests: Natalie Nelson, AuD - Clinical Trainer at Phonak; Ashley Hughes, AuD - Audiologist at Interacoustics 

Topic: Navigating Student Loans & Negotiating Effectively: A Guide for Young Hearing Pros

Natalie and Ashley join Dave on the podcast to share their hard-earned wisdom around navigating student debt and utilizing collaborative negotiation in the work-world. For students and young hearing professionals entering into the first or second industry job, these two help to illustrate real tactics one can use to efficiently pay down student debt. Many of the tactics mentioned through the convo revolve around learning how to properly negotiate at the onset of one's career. 

As the three discuss, the idea of collaborative negotiation is that you're working to find a win-win between you and your employer. Therefore, it's important that in order to justify asking for additional benefits or higher salary, but also provide meaningful ways to compensate for your ask. Natalie and Ashley share a wide variety of options that one might offer (such as social media management or handling walk-ins), as well as ways to practice the one's negotiating skills in everyday life so that it may come a bit more naturally in time. 

Guest: Collin Borns, Head of Business Development (US) at Speechly

Topic: Speechly: Enabling Voice User Interfaces Everywhere

This week on the podcast, Dave is joined by his old friend Collin Borns to discuss his new venture as Head of Business Development at Speechly. The two chat about the unique capabilities of Speechly, honing in on its ability to process natural language and speech recognition simultaneously, which can dramatically enhance mobile and web experiences, such as eCommerce shopping. The two talk about the current state of voice tech and how mass-enabling sophisticated voice user interfaces as a layer on websites and mobile apps might help to further accelerate the overall adoption of voice assistants.

Transcript: here