The Speechly Podcast

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces. Today we have the season finale of the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series - where we have been doing interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. 

Today my guest is the one and only Adam Cheyer. Adam was the Co-Founder of Siri which was sold to Apple and Viv Labs which was sold to Samsung to power the Bixby Voice Assistant. However, looking at his work before starting Siri shines a light on how Adam ultimately came to start 2 of the most used Voice Assistant technologies in the world. Before starting Siri, Adam had already built a prototype of the assistant while working at SRI International in the early 1990's. 

In this discussion we explore a range of topics such as:

- What led to the ultimate founding of Siri?

- The story behind the Apple acquisition and how Adam ultimately turned down an initial acquisition offer from Steve Jobs himself.

- The background of Siri as a standalone application and how it evolved with the acquisition by Apple.

- Why was Viv Labs started and ultimately sold to Samsung?

- What is the concept of Voice being an "Expert UI"?

- What have we gotten right with Voice Technology and what have we gotten wrong?

- Where will Voice-enabled experiences go in the years ahead?

I hope you enjoy this interview with Adam Cheyer on The Speechly Podcast.

Follow Adam:

Adam.Cheyer.com

Siri, Back to the Future - Video Presentation

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Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

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Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast and the next episode in the "Designing and Developing Voice UIs" series, where we discuss existing best practices for the Design & Development of Voice UIs as well as emerging topics relevant to the progression of Voice UI technology.

In todays discussion, we dig into the history of Voice Technology at Dominos. I was joined by our Head of Marketing at Speechly, Mandi Galluch, who before joining Speechly spent a part of her career at Dominos working on the Dom Voice Assistant. We were also joined by 3 other members of the Domino's team - Adrian Peña, John Schultz, and Tom Stack. We dug into topics such as:

- Why did Domino's start paying attention to Conversational Experiences? 

- What has gone well when building the Dom experience and what challenges have they faced?

- How does the design of a Voice-enabled experience change when users have access to a screen?

- Where do they expect voice experiences in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) space to go in 2022?

I hope you enjoy this interview with Mandi, Adrian, John, and Tom on The Speechly Podcast!

Follow Speechly:

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces. Today we have the next interview from the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series - where we have interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences.

Today my guest is Dr. David Nahamoo. David is the CTO of Pryon, an AI company that delivers augmented intelligence for the enterprise. However, prior to becoming the CTO at Pryon, David had an extensive career at IBM. He led award-winning teams for nearly four decades and ultimately became the IBM Research Speech CTO. David's extensive experience in the space gave us a unique view into how various pieces of Speech Recognition and Natural Language Understanding technology have evolved over the last few decades.

We discussed various topics such as:

- How have the problems in Speech Recognition changed from the 1980s to present day 2022?

- How have the techniques for developing Speech Recognition changed from the 1980s to present day 2022?

- What have been some of the best use cases for Speech Recognition and Voice UIs at IBM?

- The importance of setting reasonable user expectations with Voice-enabled exeriences.

- Key trends to pay attention to in Speech Recognition and Natural Language Understanding in 2022

I hope you enjoy this interview with Dr. David Nahamoo on The Speechly Podcast!

Follow Pryon:

Pryon.com

Twitter - @pryon

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Follow Speechly:

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces. Today we have the next interview from the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series - where we have interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences.

Today my guest is Jeff Adams. Jeff has been in the Voice Tech space for decades. His first role in the space was at the company known today as Nuance, however we discuss how they went through a few different names along the way. Following his time at Nuance he joined Yap as a VP of Research, the company who would later be sold to Amazon as the first acquisition for the Alexa project. After spending a few years at Amazon after the acquisition, Jeff started his own Speech Technology company called Cobalt Speech where he is the CEO today. 

We discussed various topics such as:

- How did Jeff first get interested in Voice Technology?

- How did Jeff's roles change from Nuance, to Yap, to Amazon, to Cobalt and what use cases did he help bring to market?

- Background on how Jeff helped Yap achieve the "first known example of fully automatic speech recognition matching human performance."

- What have been some of the biggest changes in Speech and Language Technology over the last few decades?

- What are the most important problems to solve with Speech and Language Technology in 2022?

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jeff Adams on the Speechly Podcast!

Follow Cobalt Speech:

CobaltSpeech.com

Twitter - @CobaltSpeech

LinkedIn

Follow Speechly:

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces. Today we have the next interview from the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series. In this series you can expect interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences.

Today my guest is Igor Jablokov. Igor is a true veteran in the world of Speech Recognition and Voice-enabled experiences. In the early 2000's, he led the Innovation team at IBM that invented the precursor to the Watson system we know today. Following his time at IBM, Igor founded Yap - a Speech Recognition company that was later acquired by Amazon as one of the first pieces of technology to go into building Alexa. Today Igor is the Founder and CEO of Pryon, an AI company that delivers augmented intelligence for the enterprise.

We discussed topics such as:

    - What was the main objective in developing Speech Recognition for the IBM Innovation Team in the early 2000s?

    - What led to the founding of Yap?

    - What made the Speech Recognition technology at Yap around long duration dialogues unique?

    - What involvement did Yap have with Apple?

    - What was the background on the Amazon acquisition of Yap?

    - Differences between "Conversational" Voice experiences & Voice as a Feature experiences.

    - Why was Pryon started to focus on augmented intelligence in the Enterprise?

I hope you enjoy this interview with Igor on the Speechly Podcast!

Follow Igor & Pryon:

Pryon.com

Twitter - Igor & Pryon

Linkedin - Pryon

Follow Speechly:

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces. Today we have the next interview from the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series. In this series you can expect interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences.

Today my guest is Bret Kinsella. Bret is the founder of the go to site for all things Voice Tech and Conversational AI news, Voicebot.ai. However, prior to starting Voicebot Bret got started with Voice Technology as the CMO at XappMedia, early pioneers in voice-enabled interactive audio advertising. With 2021 coming to an end, I couldn't think of a better guest to have a discussion with on the key trends from the past year and what to pay attention to in 2022. We discussed topics such as:

- What was the experience like as the CMO XappMedia?

- What led to the start of Voicebot.ai?

- What were the key trends from the Voice Tech space in 2021?

- What will be the key Voice Tech trends in 2022?

- Why is Voice Tech taking off in the Enterprise? 

- What role will Voice Tech play in the Metaverse?

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Bret Kinsella on the Speechly Podcast!

Follow Bret & Voicebot.ai:

Voicebot.ai

Twitter - @voicebotai and @bretkinsella

Linkedin - Voicebot

Voice Insider

Follow Speechly:

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces.

Today is the second interview from the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series. In this series you can expect interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences.

Today my guest is the one and only Noelle Silver. Noelle provides an amazing perspective on Voice Technology given her vast experiences across many well known companies including Amazon, Microsoft, NPR, Redhat and IBM. However, listening to this interview you will quickly realize that despite having an amazing career, Noelle is driven by using her experience to educate more people on how to enter the world of Voice Technology and Artificial Intelligence.

We discussed topics such as:

- What was it like to build 100 of the first skills to ever exist on Alexa?

- What did Amazon get right and what did they get wrong with the launch of Alexa?

- What are the common scenarios where a Voice User Interface can add value to an experience?

- What are the differences between a Multi-Modal Voice UI and a purely Conversational Voice UI?

- What are the different considerations when building a Voice UI for Consumers vs the Enterprise?

- What do we need to pay attention to now with Privacy and Security in Voice-Enabled experiences to ensure we have a healthy ecosystem in the future?

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Noelle Silver on the Speechly Podcast!

Follow Noelle:

NoelleSilver.com

LinkedIn

Twitter - @NoelleSilver_

Instagram - @Noelle.ai

Tik Tok - @Noelle.ai

Follow Speechly:

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn

Welcome to a new series on The Speechly Podcast - the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series.

In this series you can expect interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences.

The main goal of this series is to use the lessons learned from the Voice Pioneers to inform and inspire the current generation of product builders in the world of Voice User Interfaces.

This week I am joined by Ian Freed, Co-Founder and CEO of Bamboo Learning, the leaders in creating voice-enabled educational applications. Before starting Bamboo Learning, Ian spent over a decade at Amazon having jobs such as Tech Advisor to Jeff Bezos and VP of Devices where he overlooked Alexa-Enabled hardware.

We dug into topics such as:

    - What is it like to be Tech Advisor to Jeff Bezos?

    - Did Amazon have a plan for Alexa on the Fire Phone?

    - What would Voice Experiences look like today if Amazon owned a Mobile Platform?

    - What did General Voice Assistant platforms get right & wrong with the rollout of Voice Assistants?

    - How do Voice Experiences for children differ from older demographics?

    - What are the benefits of Multi-Modal Voice Experiences vs purely Conversational Voice Experiences?

I hope you enjoy this interview with Ian Freed on The Speechly Podcast!

Follow Bamboo Learning:

BambooLearning.com

iOS App Download

Twitter - @learnwithbamboo

LinkedIn

Follow Speechly:

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast and the next episode in the "Designing and Developing Voice UIs" series.

In this series we will be having open discussions with members of the Product Team at Speechly exploring topics related to the Design & Development of Voice UIs in everyday technology.  We will discuss existing best practices for the Design & Development of Voice UIs as well as emerging topics relevant to the progression of Voice UI technology.

Today I am joined by Hannes, Co-Founder and CTO at Speechly, to have a discussion on Guidelines for Creating Productive Voice-Enabled Apps. You can find the blog post that supports our discussion here.

We dug into topics such as:

- Setting the Right Context with a Voice-Enabled experience

- How to receive voice commands from a user

- The best way to give feedback to a user of a Voice-Enabled experience

- How to easily recover from mistakes with a Multi-Modal Voice experience

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Hannes on The Speechly Podcast!

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast and the next episode in the "Designing and Developing Voice UIs" series.

In this series we will be having open discussions with members of the Product Team at Speechly exploring topics related to the Design & Development of Voice UIs in everyday technology.  We will discuss existing best practices for the Design & Development of Voice UIs as well as emerging topics relevant to the progression of Voice UI technology.

Today I am joined by Otto, Co-Founder and CEO at Speechly, to have a discussion on Voice Form & Tap-To-Talk Components for React and Web as well as Evaluating Deployed Voice UI Models.

We dug into topics such as:

- Why are “Voice Forms” a good use case for a Multi-Modal Voice Interface?

- What are the benefits of Tap to Talk vs a Wake Word in Mobile and Web based Voice experiences?

- What are the benefits of evaluating the accuracy of a Voice UI Model configuration using a set of test utterances vs just testing with real users out of the gate?

- We also had some great questions around topics like privacy from those listening live.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Otto on The Speechly Podcast!

Follow Speechly:

Speechly.com

Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI

GitHub.com/Speechly

LinkedIn