Voice in Canada Podcast

In this episode, Teri welcomes Dr. Steven Arkonovich, a professor of philosophy at Reed College by day and a leading Alexa skill developer by night.

Welcome, Dr. Arkonovich!

Dr. Arkonovich began developing Alexa skills in 2015 before the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) SDK was even released and is best known for having the top-rated Alexa skill for weather. Big Sky has over 2,500 reviews and a 4.5-star rating. That puts Big Sky in the top 20 for skill reviews overall and number one in the weather category. He comes on to talk about his experience in creating skills for Alexa and Bixby, and his award winning skill, Big Sky.

Philosophy Professor to Voice Technology Enthusiast

• A combination of trying to put off doing a research project and an Achilles tendon injury is what ultimately led him into developing an interest in voice technology, He was confined to a chair for a long time and so he was looking for things to do.
• He got an Alexa device early on and he liked the technology. He kept hacking around with it to have it do things that it wasn’t capable of doing at the time, like play music on his stereo or turn his lights on and off.

Coding Experience

• He hadn’t done any coding before he got into Alexa skill development.
• The fact that critical aspects of philosophy and coding are similar helped him in his start as a skill developer.
• He wanted to integrate Alexa into his music server software so he could tell Alexa to play his preferred songs or albums. That was when he was referred to an actual Alexa skill developer who was doing some early Alexa projects.
• The developer wrote some basic code for him, but it had some issues and he decided to fix them himself. That’s how he started self-teaching himself the necessary coding to do to the skill development.

His First Skills

• It was a lights integration skill which included color loops and timers, features that are not yet available in any Alexa skill or device.
• He would use it to control his lights.
• He also developed skills for Evernote integration, Google Calendar integrations, and other things.
• The Google Calendar integration skill is actually still available in the skill store.

Big Sky

• This is his flagship skill and it’s all about the weather.
• He created it to give him much more detailed and obscure weather information that at the time Alexa didn’t provide. Amazon has since upped their game in that regard.
• He didn’t think much about it when he published it, but then over a period of six months, people started using it and it became very popular.

Facing Skill Imitations

• He has unique features in his skill (Big Sky), but he has witnessed some concerning issues with Amazon copying some of his features into their own weather skill.
• Asking for the weather from Big Sky or Alexa is similar in certain ways, but Big Sky is much more detailed in the forecasts it provides. It, for example, analyses the weather behind the scenes to find interesting patterns like whether the chance of rain is increasing or decreasing.
• The data it provides comes from the Dark Sky API.

Takeaways From Alexa Live

• He loved the event and the features Amazon released.
• He thinks the Quick Links feature is going to be beneficial for all users including Alexa skill developers. The NFI tool kit will also be great for developers and users depending on how it will be implemented.
• Other features that he liked included Alexa Conversations (which was integrated into Big Sky).

List of resources mentioned in this episode

• Dr. Steven Arkonovich on Twitter
• Big Sky
• The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course
• The Voice Den

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Teri welcomes Nick Sawka, an independent Alexa skills developer and the developer behind Historical Voices.  

Welcome, Nick!

Nick is a 19 year veteran of the U.S coast guard who started skills development back in 2017, and a graduate from University of Phoenix with a Bachelor's Degree in Business management and Operations. He’s an independent developer who also develops for Voice Skills Inc., a company based in San Antonio.

Getting Into Voice

• Nick began as an Amazon Prime member dating back from 2005 and when Alexa first came up he ended up calling them and he received an invitation link. He went ahead and bought it and that was his first step into what he believes is the future. 
• He always had an interest and urge to explore coding and computer programming despite having a degree in business management.
• During Nick’s military career he would build databases and in time, he began to look up skills that used session management. Finally, he decided to take the leap to create Alexa skills for people to enjoy.

More About Nick’s Skills and his Personal Development

• Nick first began by creating fact based skills such as Cut, Copy and Paste.
• He believes a good voice experience is probably a 70/30 split where visual components compliment the skill and make it more desirable.

About Historical Voices

• The idea behind Historical Voices was to bring the actual voices of people who said profound important things in the past.
• The skill was created using open source content and platforms to get famous speeches such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s, "I Have A Dream".
• Nick feels it’s important to maintain the authentic voice of the speaker and capture what they actually sounded like during those impactful moments in history.
• Historical Voices has a request feature that helps in deciding which historical figure gets featured on the skill or gets added onto the database based on if the historical figure meets the required criteria.
• Currently, the Historical Voices database contains 47 different individuals and 6 different historical events.

How it Works

• Nick wanted to incorporate a gamification aspect into the skill whereby if a users used it many times, they would unlock more people in four stages, and if they used it more than 100 times, they would unlock everything.
• The skill keeps track of a user's sessions and contains reminders that give them the ability to check out if their addition was added onto the database.
• Whenever you start the skill up on a non-screen device it throws you a card with a printout of everyone that’s on the skill and that allows you to scroll through and select who you want to listen to. 

Plans For The Future

• Nick plans to expand the database with as many inspirational people as possible in order to meet users' needs and keep them engaged and entertained.
• He also hopes to make the skill into an education and reference point for people to benefit from.

List of resources mentioned in this episode

• Nick’s Facebook Group: Alexa & Google Assistant Voice Chat
• Nick’s Facebook Group 2: Amazon Echo Show-Now Covering Everything ALEXA
• Nick on Twitter
• Nick on Instagram
• Nick’s E-mail - [email protected]
• Nick’s Website
• Nick’s YouTube Channel
• Historical Voice on the US Skill Store
• Historical Voice on the Canadian Skill Store
• The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course
• The Voice Den

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Teri will talk about some SEO tips that were shared at a livestream that he had with some members of Northern Voice.

They had a great discussion about how skills work, how they are invoked, and how to make sure that an Alexa skill is found in the skill store. This episode will be very resourceful if you’re looking to develop an Alexa skill or you already have one, and you’re looking for some SEO tips to get it out to the market.

Invocation Phrase Versus Skill Names

• When one enables their skill on Alexa, they have to have an invocation phrase because smart speakers are always waiting for that wake word (Alexa).
• Alexa skills are like apps. The way we have to open an app in our smartphone to interact with it, is the same way we have to open an Alexa skill with our voice. For example, to go into DetectiveX, you can’t just say, “Alexa, diffuse the bomb” You have to say, “Alexa, open DetectiveX”, and then begin to interact with it.
• In the Amazon skill store, a skill is listed with its name and the invocation phrases users can say to open it.
• When developing a skill, one should make sure that their description, keywords, and titles are optimized for SEO. It’s important to think about how people search for skills and to include that in the description.

 List of resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course
• VoiceID.ai
• AlexainCanada.ca/Community
• TheVoiceDen.com

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Arianne Walker, the Chief Evangelist for Alexa Auto at Amazon, where she helps educate automakers and device makers about voice.

Welcome, Arianne!

Prior to joining Amazon, she was head of automotive industry strategy at Oracle Data Cloud where she helped automotive marketers discover and implement the best possible audience strategies for their marketing efforts. Her automotive background began at JD Power, where she spent a dozen years providing direction on automotive marketing industry trends.

Getting Involved in Voice

• It all started from the auto industry for her. When she heard about the position of Chief Evangelist for Alexa Automotive, she was immediately attracted to it.
• The idea of having a great voice assistant in the car was amazing for her, and she feels the car is the most appropriate place to use a voice assistant because it strips away the complexities and minimizes distractions.
• She learned a lot since joining Amazon and she’s all about the consumer perspective of things to make sure the product always meets the needs of users.

Echo Auto

• The device allows people to bring Alexa into their car.
• It has an 8 microphone array which allows users to handle the variety of noises that exist inside the vehicle.
• It uses a cigarette lighter or USB port to get power, and connects to a phone via Bluetooth for connectivity to the cloud.
• Despite recent advances in cloud computing, machine learning and speech science, drivers consistently cite in-vehicle voice recognition among their top complaints.
• Amazon’s Alexa Auto team is addressing this gap by extending the best of Amazon Alexa into the car, and building new vehicle-specific features that make customers’ daily lives, and time spent behind the wheel, easier and more convenient.
• Their northstar for Alexa is to have it fully integrated into the vehicle experience which means having Alexa embedded into the infotainment systems of the vehicles themselves.
• They had customers sending them pictures of themselves carrying their Echo Dots into their cars.
• They have made a lot of progress in that area and are working with different companies like Pioneer to build automotive accessories and after-market car stereo that have Alexa built in to give their customers a variety of options. 
• The device uses the same amount of data as that someone would use when using their smartphone to access similar amounts of content.

Top Use Cases

• People use Alexa in their vehicles to listen to music, podcasts, and the news.
• They also use it to play games and communicate through phone calls.
• Navigation is another major use of Alexa in the car.
• People also use it for their personal needs like connecting to their smart home devices, adding reminders, or adding an item to a grocery list, and many other things.

Skills to Use in the Car

• There are a few great Alexa skills to use in the car, including, Drive Time and Song Quiz
• DriveTime is great for commutes while Song Quiz helps people to stay engaged with each other while in the car.

Adoption and The Future

• It enables people to have the same voice assistant they have at home or in the office, in their car.
• Doing things by voice in the car also ensures much more safety when people are driving.
• There’s been a great response from the market ever since they released Echo Auto and they had actually received a million requests for an invite to test it out.
• They expect the Echo Auto will meet the needs of different car owners regardless of the make and age of their cars. They anticipate that the Echo Auto will help users be productive and entertained from their vehicles for a very long time to come.

List of resources mentioned in this episode

• The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course
• The Voice Den
• Drivetime
• Song Quiz
• Arianne on Twitter

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In this episode, Teri welcomes Clint McLean, the founder and VUI designer of Budgie, a Toronto-based startup voice app design studio.

Welcome, Clint!

Budgie develops and markets Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice apps. They have five skills/actions that are currently published with more in development. Clint leverages a variety of experiences from both his creative and business background to create high production value voice and multimodal experiences. Their most famous skill at Budgie so far is Detective X, a high-production choose-your-own-adventure-style game built into a Hollywood narrative, and Clint will talk all about it and so much more.

Journeying into Voice Technology

• When Alexa became available in Canada, he was in a place where he felt burnt out on most of his creative outlets, and so he got his first smart speaker immediately they were available and starting experimenting with voice apps.
• He realized the potential that it had and found it very exciting, but he didn’t know how to code, so he kept a notepad of voice tech ideas, and then started consuming every content he could get on voice technology.
• In 2019, the Alexa in Canada podcast featured Braden Ream from Voiceflow who explained that Voiceflow was a no-code alternative for building Alexa skills.
• Clint immediately signed up for Voiceflow and that’s how he was able to start creating voice apps.
• He started working on basic voice games and apps, and he initially made a game to learn about APIs, a sing song game to learn about capturing utterances, and an Easter egg like skill to help people learn about integrating audio files.
• He later on started taking on more ambitious projects.

Detective X

• It’s a high-production choose-your-own-adventure-style game built into a Hollywood narrative, and it’s all about detectives trying to stop a killer.
• With his background in audio production and storytelling, making interactive fiction seemed like a good fit for both his strengths and he was genuinely excited about it.
• He worked with voice actors and employed sound effects and sound tracks to create an immersive experience that was unlike anything else in the market.
• He tried watching a movie with his eyes closed and imagined what it would take to have such great audio in a movie that anyone listening to it without watching would understand and enjoy the plot. That’s the mindset he had when he started working on Detective X.

Creating Detective X

• He started with a basic storyline, the same way movie scripts are written. From there he started using the poly voices within Voiceflow to start constructing the dialogue and make up each scene.
• He voiced one of the characters himself and hired voice actors on Fiverr to voice the rest of the characters.
• He included a game saving functionality since not everyone has the time or patience to play the game straight through.
• Detective X was launched in all English speaking regions and is also available on Google Assistant.
• The game officially launched at the end of May on both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and it just so happened that the Amazon Alexa team was hosting a gaming week on their Twitch channel at the same time, so Clint got them to play Detective X and the game got a lot of positive feedback.

In-Skill Purchases

• He has given a lot of thought to it and has even tried it out on some prototype versions, but he concluded that Detective X could easily be turned episodic with different cases, different mysteries to solve, and different killers. That would be a successful approach, and so in the long term he wants the initial case of the game to be free with future cases being in an ISP pay wall.

The Future

• He’s interested in collaborating with other developers and stakeholders in the voice technology industry while also continuing to work on his own projects.
• He also plans on expanding on the Detective X universe and experiment more on visuals and APL with the Echo Show.

List of resources mentioned in this episode

• The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course
• The Voice Den
• www.BudgieVoice.com
• Budgie Voice on Linkedin
• Budgie Voice on Facebook
• Budgie Voice on Twitter
• Budgie Voice on Instagram

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Teri will give us an update on routines, one of his favorite features with Alexa.

Routines is one of the most powerful features that anyone can use with Alexa. It brings the level of home automation to an entirely near level and Teri will take us through all the different settings that we can currently set up for a routine in Canada.

What is a Routine?

• It is something that you can set up so that when you trigger Alexa either with a single verbal utterance, or set it up to happen automatically at certain times on certain days of the week, Alexa can go through a number of different functions all sequentially without pausing between them.
• For example, Teri has a morning routine set up so that when he says to Alexa, “Start my day”, she goes through a number of different things. She tells him the news for the day, tells him his commute time, the weather, taps into his flash briefings, and then puts on the radio.

Setting up a Routine

• Go into your app, click on the menu button (the hamburger icon), there is an option there to click on routines.
• Click on routines. There is a little plus (+) sign on the top right corner. You click on that and that’s where you can start creating your new routine.
• There are two options to creating a new routine; one is when it happens (the trigger) and the second is adding the actions (what Alexa will do when you trigger after the trigger)
• To set up the trigger, click on “when this happens” and there is a little plus (+) sign there. There are four different options; Voice, Schedule, Device, and Alarms.
• If you click on voice, then you can enter the specific phrase that will trigger the routine, for example, Teri’s morning routine is triggered when he says, “Start my day.” 
• If you click on schedule, you will click the particular time when you will want your routine to start, and there is an option to click on repeat where you can choose which days of the week you want the routine to be triggered.
• When you click on device, you will have to choose the smart home devices you use, for example, if you have a smart lock, Alexa can be triggered when you lock or unlock the door. This part of setting up a routine depends on the kind of smart home devices you have.
• When you choose to use Alarms, whenever you dismiss an alarm, Alexa will trigger the rest of the routine.

Setting up an Action

• To set up an action, you click on “Add Action”, and you have ten different options that you can select from, for actions that Alexa can take.
• The options are Alexa Says, Calendar, Device Settings, Messaging Settings, Music Settings, News, Skills, Smart Home, Sounds, Traffic, Wait, and weather.

Alexa Says Option

• When you click on that, it triggers Alexa to actually say something to you. You can choose a custom phrase and enter a phrase. This is a great way to set up a reminder at a certain time.
• You can select Good Morning so that she simply says good morning, or you can ask her to sing a song, tell a joke, or tell a story.
• You can click on the phrases option where Alexa has several sub-categories or phrases that would be appropriate for different things.
• The real power of this feature is in how one can use it to remind them to do something at a certain time.

Calendar Option

• When you click on this, Alexa will tell you what things are on your calendar.
• You trigger it by setting up your trigger, and you have three different options including she can tell you the day’s calendar by reading it, she can tell you the following day’s calendar if you want a preview of what will happen the following day, or she can read you the next event on your calendar.
• This is how you can have your agenda told to you in the morning while you’re getting ready.

Device Settings Option

• This option allows us to change, for example, the volume. For example, Teri has a routine set to reduce Alexa’s volume when he goes to bed, and back up in the morning.
• There are two other features within device settings, and that is, Do Not Disturb and Stop Audio.
• There is also a feature that enables one to use IFTTT apps, which opens up a whole world of possibilities when it comes to automation because when one connects their Amazon account to IFTTT, then there are many different companies and apps that one can connect to.

Messaging Settings Option

• You can set this such that you can receive a notification on your Alexa app (on your phone) at a particular time.
• You can also set it up to send announcements. Announcements are things that Alexa will say and they get announced verbally on all the devices in your account.

Music Settings Option

• You can set up Alexa to play a particular song or playlist.
• You type in what you want and choose what provider (Spotify, Amazon Music, your library, etc.), and then set a time limit if you want, so that the music will play for a certain period of time and then stop.

News Option

• This is valuable. When you click News and enable it, it asks Alexa to automatically start playing your flash briefings. You have to have your flash briefings set up.

Skills Option

• This is a way that one can have Alexa trigger a skill to begin without the user having to ask Alexa to start that skill. One can choose any particular skill and Alexa can start it automatically in the routine.

Smart Home Option

• This is where you can control a particular device or group.
• Once you click on Smart Home, you will see those two options. You can click on “Control Device” and there you can click on a particular device like a light bulb or switch. Based on that smart home device, there may be particular options that you can enable.

Sounds Option

• This is a new feature and it allows the user to play various sounds, for example, when one gets home and they tell Alexa, “I’m home”, Alexa can play an applause sound.

Traffic Option

• This is where Alexa reports your traffic to you. There aren’t any options to set up here other than enabling it.

Wait Option

• This is for when you want Alexa to do something in your routine and then wait a particular length of time before moving on to the next step in the routine.

Weather Option

• Here, Alexa will report your weather based on your location.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

• How to Setup Amazon Alexa Routines in Canada
• The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course
• VoiceID.ai
• IFTTT.com
• AlexainCanada.ca/Community
• TheVoiceDen.com

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Mark Tucker, an Alexa Champion, Bixby Premier Developer, the current Senior Architect of Voice Technology at Soar.com, and the creator of the revolutionary Alexa game, Number Spies.

Welcome, Mark!

Mark Tucker is a software developer and architect with over 25 years’ experience. He started his voice-tech journey in 2016 when there were only 4,000 skills in the Alexa Skills Store, and has worked at 2 startups creating innovative voice experiences for customers. Mark finds time to create his own Alexa Skills and Bixby Capsules, and is the organizer of the Phoenix Alexa Meetup and the Phoenix Chapter of the Ubiquitous Voice Society.

He has spoken at conferences including the Phoenix Mobile and Emerging Tech Expo, The Alexa Conference, Voice Summit, and Project Voice. Mark is the creator of Speech Markdown which he released as open source and can be found at SpeechMarkDown.org. He enjoys finding ways for non-profits to benefit from voice-first. He has a passion for family, voice technology and serving others.

Getting Into Voice

• His first run in with voice technology when was he was a teenager. He had just received his first home computer and it had a voice synthesis module which could say about 80 words or phrases. He found that very cool.
• He learned how to do programming on that computer and later in high school advanced his programming knowledge.
• He has been involved in technology ever since and most of his skills are self-taught.
• He came across Alexa in 2016 when there were about 3,000 skills in the US Skills store. He started by mastering all sorts of things from Amazon Web Services to all their cloud services.
• When he got into Alexa development, he fell in love with the conversational nature of the technology and the fun experiences that one can build with it.
• Number Spies is the most ambitious project that he’s ever done and it had been an idea in his head for more than a year.

The Idea For Number Spies and How it Works

• He came across the concept of a number station, which spies used to communicate during the Cold War and World War 2, and he was fascinated by it.
• One spy would use a short wave radio to transmit a series of digits and the other spy tuned to that frequency would be able to hear the digits, but they couldn’t decode the message unless they had the one-time pad that was similar to the one the sender had. That made the message an unbreakable cypher.
• Mark learned more about that and he used some features of that concept in creating Number Spies. For example, the game produces poly-generated numbers that sound like it’s a real radio transmission. He had to mix down files together on the back end and he now has a content management system where he has can put in a message and it will encode it. The system then builds a file that can be listened to through a flash briefing.
• One can then go to a website and enter the numbers they have heard, and that can help them figure out what the secret was if they have the corresponding one-time pad.
• One can choose to manually decode a message or ask Alexa to help make the process faster.
• When one manually decodes the message they get more points.

Playing the Game

• The player takes on the role of a spy, Agent 313, who is brand new to the agency.
• The game gives the new player a walk through as part of their initial briefing after which they will be sent to spy school so they can understand the main commands they will need to use to play the game. After that, the player can start the game.
• The player can also go to the website where all the commands are listed.
• They can play at least two or three times a week decoding messages and solving puzzles.
• Inside the messages that the player has to decode, they can be told to visit a country or city, and travelling there can earn them points.
• Everything that happens in the game is tied to a certain day so the player has to play, decode the message, and complete their mission within 24 hours.
• The game also has levels and as the player moves up the levels, the missions they go on become harder and more complex.
• The player can go into a different mission every 90 minutes from when they successfully complete another one.
• There is in-skill purchasing that the player can do. For example, they need money to travel to their different locations depending on where they travel.
• The agency that one belongs to is based out of Washington, D.C. and so the farther one travels the costlier it is. The more missions one completes, the more money they get.
• When they run out of money, they can purchase more money.
• One has to use an alias when they’re travelling and so at the beginning of the game, the game creates an auto-alias for the player and then as they play the game they can create other aliases for themselves.
• The goal of playing the game is to become a master spy.
• There are many fun and entertaining aspects of the game that make it so awesome to play.

 List of resources mentioned in this episode

• The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course
• Number Spies Online
• Number Spies on Facebook
• Number Spies on Twitter
• Mark on Twitter

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Teri does a live interview with Ian Utile, the founder and CEO of Attention Live, a live streaming podcast platform he has created for YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Apple iTunes, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft Cortana.

Welcome, Ian Utile!

Ian is an innovative strategist, business development executive, entrepreneur, optimistic tech futurist, and keynote speaker. He is also the co-founder of Kukui Corp, a company ranked by Inc 500 as the #1 fastest growing private organizations in San Jose (#76 in the US). He specializes in starting software tech companies and is a partner in different non-tech projects.

He is the founder of WMVAI (We Magnify Voice for Attention and Influence), a B2B SaaS platform to automate posting content to Amazon Alexa which will in future include Google Home/Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri, and Samsung Bixby. His hobby is supporting large international non-profits. Teri did this live interview with Ian because they’re discussing live audio on Alexa.

His Vision for the Future

• He highlights that we as humanity are most likely to benefit from machine learning (AI) in voice technology, and feels that it’s logical that the current technologies will end for the good of humanity.
• He refers to the different science fiction movies and TV shows that dive into future predictions of technologies and how they will impact humanity, with a lot of them predicting the doom of technologies like AI taking over the world.
• But Ian sees voice technology as a great tool that people can use to improve their lives.

Attention Live

• Through the thought process of creativity and innovation, Ian spent the last few years building Attention Live.
• His idea was to build one thing (some kind of device on any platform) that he could speak to/through and what he would say would go out on all voice devices, social media platforms, and other channels. This is meant to solve a huge problem for content creators, and also enable consumers to access and consume content much more easily.
• Attention Live is the only software in the world that enables people to livestream to Amazon’s Alexa devices in real time. They are also the only software that can livestream to YouTube with audio in real time.
• Attention Live will decentralize things for creators and their consumers because they won’t have to go through platforms like Facebook or YouTube that hinder them from achieving their core goals.
• That is a big part of what drives Ian because he believes in a decentralized future with voice-first not touch-first.
• Attention Live will basically be a platform where people can create their content, stream it live to all platforms, and have proven ownership of the content they will produce.
• That will therefore enable the content creators to easily make money from their content.

Current State of Affairs with Attention Live

• They are creating a category that doesn’t exist (live podcasting), which is very unique and ambitious, and Ian approached the go-to-market strategy differently than he has ever approached anything.
• He decided to go out and interview every single person he possibly could in the voice tech and blockchain world.
• He has interviewed approximately 200 leaders in voice tech and 150 in blockchain. He has also led dozens of events, helped co-produce a dozen or more events, and created thousands of hours of content.
• That was a very unique way of going about developing the company because he realized he needed all the wisdom and insights of the voice tech and blockchain industries.
• He cannot give exact dates on when people will be able to access and use the platform, but they still need work on it more so they can have a proper launch.
• They currently have a beta version that they’re offering to a select few to test out.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

• Attention Live
• Ian on Linkedin
• Ian on Twitter
• Ian on Facebook
• Ian on Instagram
• The Voice Den

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Drew Cosgrove, an Amazon Alexa Games developer and publisher.

Welcome, Drew!

Drew spent 25 years in IT but felt he needed to get back to coding, the love of which had drawn him to technology in the first place. When Amazon introduced Echo in the UK, he was a senior IT architect and he knew he’d found just the opportunity he needed to sharpen his skills, and build a rewarding new career as a voice developer. Working in management felt like he was getting farther away from what he really loved to do, so he began looking for a way to get back to his technical roots, and that’s when Alexa appeared.

He actually did far more than revive his coding skills; he left the corporate world to work for himself as an Alexa skills developer. In under two years, he has published 30 engaging game skills for Alexa in several languages, attracting over 65,000 active monthly users. As the winner of multiple prizes in the UK’s monthly Alexa contest, Cosgrove says building skills for Alexa has changed his life.

Background

• He used to work with O2, the UK mobile phone company, and then worked as an IT consultancy before becoming a full-time Alexa skills developer.
• He creates his games independently and some of his skills are top ranked in Canada.

His Top Skills

• Feel the Pressure is one of his Alexa Games that are very popular in Canada.
• Another one is Animal Letters, and this one is never really finished because he keeps improving and changing it by adding more animals, sound effects, and more functionality.
• He also keeps improving on Feel the Pressure and it has different voices depending on the location, for example, the voice is different in the UK than it is in the US.

Developing Skills and the Associated Challenges

• The first challenge he didn’t realize when he started was speech recognition. The technology is much better now than it was in the past, but it’s not perfect. When it works, it’s magical, but when it doesn’t work, it’s terrible.
• When someone speaks to a smart speaker and it doesn’t understand them, it can be frustrating, and that concerned Drew a lot because his Alexa games rely heavily on speech recognition.
• A huge amount of his efforts go towards ensuring that he compensates for any speech recognition issues. He does that through a lot of testing.

Making Money in the Space

• Alexa developers have two ways of making money, namely, by being rewarded by Amazon or through in-skill purchases.
• The Amazon rewards program does not apply to skills that are available in Canada.
• In-skill purchases is where users pay a small fee to use a skill. Some of Drew’s skills go for 99 cents. Users can also buy some functionalities.

List of resources mentioned in this episode

• The Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula Course
• Animal Letters
• Feel the Pressure
• The Daily Question
• Drew's Email - [email protected]
• Drew on Twitter

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Teri will share some of his favorite skills that we can all use at home particularly while we are self-quarantining at home.

Enjoy!

We are living in very challenging times right now with the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are all spending more time at home than ever before which has led to an increased use of voice assistants. Teri will talk about the five skills that his family uses on a regular basis. They include games and many other ways that they use Alexa for entertainment.

And The Teri Fisher Top Five Skills Are:

#1 - Question of the Day

• This is super fun and the best trivia skill so far in Teri’s opinion.
• It works by asking the user a multiple point question and then keeps track of how the user is doing, gives them points, keeps track of the users streaks, and so much more.
• It's a very fun way of learning some random facts.
• When someone gets their question right, the skill gives them a bonus question. It even has badges that users earn.
• There are lots of gamification aspects to the skill that makes a user want to keep playing.
• It was made by MatchBox.io
• It’s invocation word is, “Alexa, start Question of the Day” or “Alexa, enable Question of the Day”

#2 - Would You Rather?

• This is a game that gives the user a random question, for example, “Would you rather itch all the time or sneeze all the time?”
• Multiple people can play the game together at the same time.
• It has different categories, including General, Magic, and Hogwarts.
• It gives users the answers in terms of what most people say.

#3 - Kid’s Court

• It was done by Pretzel Labs and its awesome especially for kids because Alexa acts as a judge, and she helps to give a judgement on different situations that may be happening at home.
• The user goes to judge Alexa and she rules on something that has happened, typically when kids are fighting or not getting along. They can each state their case, defend themselves, and even learn some law concepts in the process.
• The command for it is, “Alexa, open Kid’s Court”

#4 - Song Quiz

• The command for it is, “Alexa, open Song Quiz”
• It’s a name-a-tune type of skill/game.
• A user can choose the number of players they want and if they’re playing alone, the skill can match them up to play with someone else in the world.
• One can choose music from different decades and it plays a short segment of a song so one can name the title and artist. If one gets both the title and artist right, they get bonus points.
• It’s very well produced and has lots of great sound effects built into it.

#5 - Akinator

• The command for it is, “Alexa, open Akinator”
• It guesses who the user is thinking of and it does that by asking the user a series of questions.
• It amazingly correctly guesses who someone is thinking of most of the time.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

• Flash Briefing Formula
• VoiceID.ai
• AlexainCanada.ca/Chat
• Question of the Day
• Would You Rather?
• Kid’s Court
• Song Quiz
• Akinator
• TheVoiceDen.com

Other useful resources:

• Voice in Canada: The Flash Briefing
• Complete List of Alexa Commands
• Alexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in Canada
• Teri Fisher on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada on Twitter
• Alexa in Canada Facebook Page
• Alexa in Canada Community Group on Facebook
• Alexa in Canada on Instagram
• Please leave a review on iTunes
• Shopping on Amazon.ca

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.