Brand New Day
3 voice/AI takeaways from Project Voice X in person in Florida earlier this week; virtual event TOMORROW (Friday)
Sting released Brand New Day, the lead single off his album of the same name, back in fall of 1999.
Who knew that it would take on entirely new meaning 22 years later, in describing the way our mindset has changed amidst a pandemic and entering a new chapter to come?
Sting won a Grammy for this tune in 2000. Well deserved.
Project Voice X took place earlier this week in sunny Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
Here are three takeaways from the in-person event:
1) Deepgram and Cyrano joined forces to do something equally fun and incredible: transcribe and analyze my opening talk, and then share those results openly with the audience just an hour later.
I spoke to kick off Project Voice X at 9 AM on Monday. By 10:15 AM, Scott Sandland, CEO of Cyrano.AI, already had the below slides integrated into his presentation, analyzing my talk (from Deepgram’s real-time transcription).
I’ve never seen anything like this at any event, real or virtual, I’ve attended. A testament to the agility and expertise of both of these two voice/AI companies.
Amazing.
2) The Alexa Slack channel is an essential source of business intelligence for voice/AI executives and those starting companies in the space.
Being able to see questions being asked of Amazon by developers and executives from across the world is invaluable in identifying emergent trends and staying on top of how others are using the ecosystem.
Consider two recent queries posted this week in the channel - where else would you find these things discussed?
3) Conversational AI has a role to play in preserving history, heritage, and culture.
Davar Ardalan, executive producer of audio for National Geographic and founder of new voice/AI company iVow.AI, gave a rousing talk about a recent project involving Google Assistant that honors her recently-passed mother.
Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar was internationally known for her pioneering studies of the Quran and women’s rights. Ardalan wanted to capture her mother’s vast depth of knowledge and make it available to scholars and women’s rights activists to come.
The voice assistant that captures what’s most important to us, is the voice assistant that can share that with future generations.
But to do so, deeply challenges our concepts of privacy and security.
An interesting thing to ponder.
Tomorrow (Friday, October 29) is Project Voice X Worldwide.
A virtual event featuring a wide range of companies from across the voice/AI universe.
Registration gets you access to the event, along with audio and video files afterward.
Two more in person events taking place before the end of the year:
Voice of Money, which will gather 200 folks working in banking and finance, takes place in New York City’s financial district on November 10, while Voice of Gaming gathers together 200 executives and developers working within all types of modern gaming to discuss how voice and conversational AI are re-shaping that domain.
Registration for Voice of Money is here, while registration for Voice of Gaming is here.