This episode of Machine Yearning is special. Shane is joined by Google's Cathy Pearl for a live recording where they take a deep dive into the topic of Compassionate Conversational Experiences.

To say conversation design is a passion of Cathy’s is an understatement. She built her first chatbot before chatbots were even a thing - 1984 to be precise -  and now uses her wealth of knowledge to help people make the best conversational experiences possible.

Topics include:

- Best Practices for Designing Conversations 

- Conversational Design Frameworks and Examples 

- How to Launch a New Chatbot

Some of the resources referenced in the discussion are available here:

1. A Conversation With My 35-year-old Chatbot

2. Google's conversation design best practices

3. The conversation design collection (including this guide to writing sample dialogs)

4. CathyPearl.com for links to previous talks / FAQ on conversation design

This podcast is brought to you by Conversocial - conversocial.com

It’s Machine Yearning from Assist. Another week where we continue on this adventure where marketers, brands, and entrepreneurs get to have a place to think, dream, and ask questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we’re reshaping our culture.

This week is a rocket. And the rocket has a name. Max Sklar.

Max is machine learning engineer at Foursquare and is a fountain of smart, concise thinking on privacy, social media and whether we’re looking at an imminent AI winter.

Assist’s Shane Mac got so much goodness from his fellow podcaster. We think this is an episode so packed with goodness you’ll want to give it a few listens and DEFINITELY share it with friends.

Then…! Make sure you check out Max’s pod - The Local Maximum. It’s awesome.

This week is a rocket. And the rocket has a name. Max Sklar.

Max is machine learning engineer at Foursquare and is a fountain of smart, concise thinking on recommendation, anticipation and how to break through with your product design.

In this chapter from the longer podcast, Assist’s Shane Mac got so much goodness from his fellow podcaster. We think this is so packed with goodness you’ll want to give it a few listens and DEFINITELY share it with friends.

Then…! Make sure you check out Max’s pod - The Local Maximum. It’s awesome.

This week is a rocket. And the rocket has a name. Max Sklar.

Max is machine learning engineer at Foursquare and is a fountain of smart, concise thinking and in the next 11 minutes Max and Shane are going to help you sound smarter about the problems of social media. The objectivity/ subjectivity conundrum, language classifiers, tweaks to the recommender system - Max hones in on several of the Gordian Knots that keep us stuck.

All of this has significant ramifications for everyone who is trying to figure out how to blend sentiment, community satisfaction and technology.

In this chapter from the longer podcast, Assist’s Shane Mac got so much goodness from his fellow podcaster. We think this is so packed with goodness you’ll want to give it a few listens and DEFINITELY share it with friends.

Then…! Make sure you check out Max’s pod - The Local Maximum. It’s awesome.

This week is a rocket. And the rocket has a name. Max Sklar.

Max is machine learning engineer at Foursquare and is a fountain of smart, concise thinking on privacy, social media and whether we’re looking at an imminent AI winter.

In this chapter from the longer podcast, Assist’s Shane Mac got so much goodness from his fellow podcaster. We think this is so packed with goodness you’ll want to give it a few listens and DEFINITELY share it with friends.

Then…! Make sure you check out Max’s pod - The Local Maximum. It’s awesome.

A few episodes back, Machine Yearning brought you a series of conversations from the VOICE conference. With over 2000 attendees at the largest gathering of the conversational technology world, VOICE was intense. You heard from voice and machine learning powerhouses like Cathy Pearl from Google and Patricia Scanlon, who has built a natural language data set from over a million samples of children under 12.

Now, we’re excited to present another individual with profound Natural Language Processing experience: Dr. Deborah Dahl. Deborah has been at the forefront of voice and speech, multimodal and accessibility standards design on the web for over 30 years. Her view on this space, and her sense of humor about it all, is fantastic. These days, Deborah is the Principal behind Conversational Technologies, a company that focuses on new, disruptive applications of speech and language technologies.

Let’s dive in, mid-conversation, where we asked Deborah to step back and give us some overview on notable projects from across her storied career.

A few episodes back, Machine Yearning brought you a series of conversations from the VOICE conference. With over 2000 attendees at the largest gathering of the conversational technology world, VOICE was intense. You heard from voice and machine learning powerhouses like Cathy Pearl from Google and Patricia Scanlon, who has built a natural language data set from over a million samples of children under 12.

Now, we’re excited to present another individual with profound Natural Language Processing experience: Dr. Deborah Dahl. Deborah has been at the forefront of voice and speech, multimodal and accessibility standards design on the web for over 30 years. Her view on this space, and her sense of humor about it all, is fantastic. These days, Deborah is the Principal behind Conversational Technologies, a company that focuses on new, disruptive applications of speech and language technologies.

Let’s dive in, mid-conversation, where we asked Deborah to step back and give us some overview on notable projects from across her storied career.

A few episodes back, Machine Yearning brought you a series of conversations from the VOICE conference. With over 2000 attendees at the largest gathering of the conversational technology world, VOICE was intense. You heard from voice and machine learning powerhouses like Cathy Pearl from Google and Patricia Scanlon, who has built a natural language data set from over a million samples of children under 12.

Now, we’re excited to present another individual with profound Natural Language Processing experience: Dr. Deborah Dahl. Deborah has been at the forefront of voice and speech, multimodal and accessibility standards design on the web for over 30 years. Her view on this space, and her sense of humor about it all, is fantastic. These days, Deborah is the Principal behind Conversational Technologies, a company that focuses on new, disruptive applications of speech and language technologies.

Let’s dive in, mid-conversation, where we asked Deborah to fill us in in some of her most recent projects and she wowed us on the breadth of what’s happening in speech-driven technology.

We spend our time here thinking, dreaming, and asking questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we’re reshaping our culture.

You wouldn’t think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand and the future of digital creative agencies would be Machine Yearning territory.

But they are - when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton.

Daniel is the CEO of Pyxl (that’s P-Y-X-L,) a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build and measurement. Before joining Pyxl this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet, where he partnered with Amazon and Google so that travellers could access Lonely Planet products through the Alexa device and Google Home. The company launched a platform for digital videos with GoPro and did a ton of e-commerce. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company’s 2018 "Most Innovative Companies" List and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30.

Now, Daniel is on the agency side and diving in to a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist and student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken and this was his first interview as PYXL CEO.

This is Machine Yearning, though, so this isn’t the typical arms-crossed-looking-manly-on-the-magazine-cover CEO interview.

Hang out and enjoy.

We spend our time here thinking, dreaming, and asking questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we’re reshaping our culture.

You wouldn’t think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand and the future of digital creative agencies would be Machine Yearning territory.

But they do - when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton.

Daniel is the CEO of Pyxl (that’s P-Y-X-L,) a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build and measurement. Before joining Pyxl this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company’s 2018 "Most Innovative Companies" List and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30.

Now, Daniel is on the agency side with PYXL and diving in to a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist and student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken and this was his first interview as PYXL CEO.

This is Machine Yearning, though, so this isn’t the typical arms-crossed-looking-manly-on-the-magazine-cover CEO interview.

Hang out and enjoy.