Five different french audio startups explain what their companies’ missions are as they’re interviewed at the Vivatech 2021 mega-conference in Paris, France. One french company that stood out was Cogneed, which focuses on the power of AI specifically when it comes to Inside Sales, Customer Care & Sales Development Reps, assisting them with dynamic display of relevant information, triggered by audio detection. Then comes Storyfox, a video interview tool that companies can use to create struct...
Jun 24, 2021•46 min•Ep. 86
Hans van Dam is the CEO of Conversation Design Institute, a company that teaches a human-centric workflow to conversation design which has proven itself in organisations around the world. This is Hans’s second appearance on the show, the first one being in episode 51 back in January. Hans explains what exactly conversation design means and focuses on its importance regarding conversational AI technologies. He shares his vast experience with training conversation designers at CDI, in order to suc...
Jun 07, 2021•59 min•Ep. 85
Jaime Bosch is the co-founder CEO of Voicemod, a massively popular real-time voice manipulation, augmentation & soundboard application for Windows PC. He is joined by Alex Bordanova, Director of Audio Experience at Voicemod. Based in Valencia, Spain, Voicemod has amassed over 17 million registered users & is the number one choice to create a unique & powerful sonic identity, whether it’s for gaming, content creation, dungeon-mastering, or just hanging out with friends online. We hear...
May 18, 2021•28 min•Ep. 84
Muddu Sudhakar is the CEO of Aisera, the world’s first solution to use Conversational AI and Conversational RPA to transform the Service Desk in the Enterprise. We discuss how enterprises are using Aisera’s A.I. to automate and auto-resolve service desk requests from both employees and customers. Muddu predicts that service desk tools will be used less over the coming years, to be replaced by self-service AI-powered Conversational platforms on collaboration tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and S...
May 04, 2021•14 min•Ep. 83
Marco Liuni is the co-founder and audio miner at Alta Voce, a research-backed startup based in Paris, France that shapes the emotions in human and artificial voices to enhance communication. Their product, Alta Call, is a voice transformation technology for contact centers, improving both the clarity of speech and enhancing the smile in the voice. Marco explains how their tech works, and we hear samples of audio that have been transformed. We also cover some of the ethical issues of transforming...
Apr 06, 2021•40 min•Ep. 82
Christian Mahnke is CEO of EarReality, which helps some of the biggest companies in the world such as Disney, Audible, and Vox create interactive stories for voice marketing. Their stories are published on Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Samsung Bixby and more. Christian shares some of his best practices for interactive voice writers, including why it's important to write characters that people identify with. EarReality is set for success with the upcoming launch of Twist, their interactive stor...
Mar 23, 2021•55 min•Ep. 81
Christian Petroske is President of Shoutworks , a new Wordpress plugin that lets you publish content to Amazon Alexa with the push of a button. ShoutWorks lets you send notifications through Amazon Alexa, with a 90 percent plus open rate. This helps publishers grow their audience, get more leads, and boost sales in a few clicks. In this episode, Christian and host Carl Robinson discuss the Shoutworks Wordpress plugin, what it is, and how it helps you create an Alexa skill in just one click. Chri...
Nov 30, 2020•40 min•Ep. 80
Simon Landry is the founder of Voice Market Data, a service that makes voice market data more accessible to voice developers. We discover how a macro view of the Alexa marketplace can help us measure app success in different markets, spot new product opportunities and feature ideas, and highlight discoverability issues. Simon’s extensive academic background has given him a unique ability to unearth rich data, and present it in an accessible format that can be understood by all. This is a fascina...
Nov 02, 2020•36 min•Ep. 79
This episode was created by Roger Kibbe, senior developer evangelist for Viv Labs/Samsung, for the Bixby Developers Chat podcast. Roger interviewed me, Carl Robinson, about my new project, Rumble Studio. It’s an innovative new tool for recording podcasts and audio content asynchronously; and yes, we used Rumble Studio to record this podcast! Here’s what Roger wrote in the original podcast description: We discuss how Carl got involved in podcasting and what he has learned 70+ podcasts in. Carl gi...
Oct 12, 2020•59 min•Ep. 78
Design Sprint was greeted by Jake Knapp, and the idea is to build and test a prototype in only five days. A small team works for a week to rapidly progress from problem to tested solution, using a proven step-by-step checklist. Jake describes it as fast-forwarding into the future so you can see how customers react before you invest all the time and expense of building a real product. The Design Sprint is a method that has been adopted across digital industries to make better product designs in a...
Sep 28, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 77
Imagine if voice technology could be used to diagnose diseases! This could be a reality if voice tech is used to identify non-speech sounds, such as coughs. This focus is of particular interest at the moment as the world’s governments rally resources to protect populations against COVID-19. This is one area of focus for this week’s guest, Prof. Ami Moyal, President, Afeka Tel Aviv College of Engineering, Israel. Prof. Ami also talks about the future of voice technology and what we should be teac...
Sep 15, 2020•20 min•Ep. 76
Today on the show, we welcome Jason Croyle, the Director of Partnerships at Speak2Web, and Dr. Saksham Sharda, the Creative Director at Outgrow, to talk about interactive websites and website marketing through conversational interaction. In this episode, we learn more about the features of both the Speak2Web and Outgrow platforms and how they differ. Speak2Web helps customers create an integrative web and voice experience, whereas Outgrow is focused more on interactive content for your website (...
Aug 31, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 75
When we talk about the way that AI will shape the future, there are such polarized beliefs, with one camp fearing it and the other vehemently dismissing these fear-filled claims. Today’s guest, Byron Reese, believes that these opposing views stem from fundamentally different world views. Byron is the former CEO of Gigaom, a well-respected technology publication and tech research company that writes about trends and tech that business leaders need to know about and understand. He is also a prolif...
Aug 17, 2020•56 min•Ep. 74
Aside from having an excellent product, one of the best ways to foster adoption is by building community support early on. One company that has reaped the rewards of taking this approach, is Rasa, an open-source, natural language understanding framework that helps companies build mission-critical contextual assistants, and its co-founder and CTO, Alan Nichol, joins us today. We kick this episode off by learning more about Rasa’s mission to become the no-brainer technology for building conversati...
Aug 04, 2020•58 min•Ep. 73
Brand recognition has long been about logos, taglines, and advertising campaigns, but what if you could use a voice that sounded like your brand to add another level of brand awareness? This is one of the many interesting services ReadSpeaker, an innovative text-to-speech company offers, and its founder and CTO, Niclas Bergström, joins us today. In this episode, we learn more about the company and the variety of products they offer. From web-based SaaS solutions for management and educational sy...
Jul 20, 2020•57 min•Ep. 72
This is a special bonus episode recorded on the new Rumble Studio audio platform that I’ve created. Rumble Studio is a conversational A.I. SaaS for businesses to plan, record, publish and distribute audio for content marketing, and in a fraction of the time it takes today. The conversations are recorded asynchronously, so I’ve coined the new term, BotcastTM. The very first BotcastTM to be published on the Voice Tech Podcast is with Rabbi Elijah C Dordek! Elijah (Elie) is the founder of ShanenLi,...
Jul 13, 2020•43 min•Ep. 71
As the voice industry continues to grow in leaps and bounds, conversational components stand out as a key development moving forward. What are these conversational components? Simply put, they are modular blocks of customizable, reusable conversational services, accessible via APIs that can fit together in a myriad of ways to form larger, conversational flows. Conversational Components, known as CoCo are leading the charge with this modular-based component approach. In this episode, Yaki Dunietz...
Jul 06, 2020•58 min•Ep. 70
As the number of voice tech innovations continues to rise, how are investors responding? Is there interest in this potential investment niche or has it not yet penetrated the investor psyche enough for serious capital injection? Today's guest, Yannick Oswald of Mangrove Capital Partners, shares his investor insights into the voice tech space. Mangrove Capital is a venture capital firm chasing transformational ideas around the world, with a focus on early-stage companies before product launch. Th...
Jun 22, 2020•51 min•Ep. 69
Today on the show, we welcome Jan König, co-founder of Jovo. Jovo is an open source layer that lets you build and run voice experiences across multiple devices and platforms including, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Samsung Bixby, mobile phone and web apps, and many more! In this episode, we get an inside look into Jovo’s architecture and business model, as well as the latest and greatest version of the build-once deploy-everywhere solution for voice. Jovo version 3 has just been released, and ...
Jun 08, 2020•58 min•Ep. 68
Today on the show, we welcome Steve Tingiris. Steve is a leader in the field of voice development, a serial entrepreneur, and amazingly he still codes everyday. He’s the founder of Dabble Lab, which builds tech products and tools to automate business workflows with a strong focus on AI-powered digital assistants and voice. He also runs the hugely popular DabbleLab YouTube channel. The topic of today’s show is getting started with voice development. Here, we hear from Steve about the various stag...
May 25, 2020•49 min•Ep. 67
Today on the show, we welcome Carl Robinson. Yep, the script has been flipped, and your favorite Voice Tech Podcast host is now on the other side of the mic as today’s guest! Interviewing Carl live from Project Voice is the brilliant Keri Roberts – host of the Inside Voice Podcast. In this episode, we find out more about Carl’s background as a data scientist, how he got interested in voice tech through emotion detection technology, and the fascinating array of projects he has worked on since tho...
May 11, 2020•21 min•Ep. 66
Marek Mis is the founder of OnlyOne, the first ever voice-dating application. Only One helps users find their true love using only their voice. We explore the fascinating concept of without images, diving into the product features, and how the platform matches you up with your perfect partner. We discuss dating apps in general, typical behavioral patterns seen on dating apps today, as well as the benefits of having voice-only matchmakers, as opposed to the more multi-modal features seen in ‘trad...
Apr 27, 2020•46 min•Ep. 65
Jon is the leader of the Open Voice Network, an organization that seeks to create a future of AI voice that is standards-based, interoperable, accessible, and data protected. While the voice movement is growing rapidly, it is still very much in a fledgling state. This makes the task of setting up governance and standards in the space highly relevant, and one which Jon is working hard to address. In today’s episode, we talk about why we need a network like OVN at all, and what happens if we don’t...
Apr 13, 2020•46 min•Ep. 64
Braden Ream is the CEO of Voiceflow, a collaborative design platform for voice app development. Voiceflow is currently responsible for powering one million conversations a month and 6% of the world’s Alexa Skills are built on their platform. In this episode, we discover how to build Alexa Skills and Google Actions without coding, using Voiceflow’s drag and drop interface. First off, we dive into conversation design on Voiceflow, the difference between using flowcharts and stateful design, the li...
Apr 06, 2020•52 min•Ep. 63
Emerson Sklar is the Chief Evangelist at Bespoken, a company with a popular toolkit for testing and monitoring voice apps. We start by unpacking the fundamentals of testing and the various types, from the unit and end-to-end testing to continuous and usability performance testing. Emerson talks to us through the product features of Bespoken and how it works. We discover the surprising fact that their system uses text-to-speech to generate audio, which is then fed to a virtual Alexa on the server...
Mar 23, 2020•55 min•Ep. 62
Bixby 2, Samsung’s new voice assistant, is poised to become a major player in the voice ecosystem. With 500m devices sold each year, it represents an enormous opportunity for voice developers. Bixby’s Lead Developer Evangelist, Roger Kibbe, introduces us to the new product and what it means for developers, users, and the frontier of voice. In this episode, Roger talks about the coming paradigm shift voice presents in the way we will interact with our devices. He gets into what using Bixby will b...
Mar 16, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 61
In today’s episode, you’ll hear four of my favorite conversations with brands and providers recorded at the recent Project Voice conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee. First up is Alexey Khitrov from IDR&D, who comes back on the show to give us an update on recent features, including their prizewinning results on liveness checks, a five-step behind-the-scenes authentication system, and their recent adoption of face technology too. Next up are Ron Jaworski and Noa Eshed from Trinity Audio who ...
Mar 09, 2020•56 min•Ep. 60
As voice-assistant technologies become more frequent in many different industries, questions of its influence on those industries themselves become more pertinent. Today’s guest is Krish Velkar from Ogilvy, who joins us to discuss his recent master's dissertation which explored the influence of voice assistants on the purchasing of FMCG products (fast-moving consumer goods). In this episode, we discuss the history of voice technology and the ways people are beginning to use it more frequently in...
Mar 02, 2020•50 min•Ep. 59
On the show this week, we welcome Stacey Zuniga, the VP of Financial Services at ENACOMM, a FinTech provider of intelligent interactions and customer authentication for banks and financial services companies. Also joining us for the conversation is Kelly Burdette, the Senior Vice President of Digital and Product at Bank Independent – a customer of ENACOMM. Talking with both the technology provider and the client about how voice banking was implemented on Alexa makes for a well-rounded discussion...
Feb 24, 2020•50 min•Ep. 58
Today on the show we talk with seven leading French companies in the burgeoning European voice space. The Voice Tech Paris 2019 Conference took place just last November and was the first B2B event dedicated to voice technology in France. But with over 50 speakers and 700 participants who attended, it’s safe to say that it’s certainly not going to be the last! In this episode, we hear from seven pioneering startups, ranging in specializations from speech analytics, to real-time voice transformati...
Feb 17, 2020•54 min•Ep. 57
