This past January, we held Project Voice - the #1 event in voice and AI in America.
Amazon, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft were all Presenting Sponsors.
Thousands of attendees. Business got done. Friends were made. The world moved.
And then, the pandemic.
Project Voice was where Aariv Modi both attended his first conference and gave his first talk, speaking about his young career as an Alexa developer.
Project Voice was where Mercedes-Benz physically demonstrated how they’ve integrated voice and AI into the car.
Project Voice was where hundreds of interviews took place - the number of press passes we granted tripled over the previous year.
Project Voice was where many new friends were made, old friends re-connected, and the fabric of community grew.
And Project Voice, perhaps most importantly, is where the voice and AI communities came together to advance our own shared understanding.
We’ve made some changes to how we do things, in order to bring Project Voice to as many people as possible.
The first thing we’re doing is pushing the entire thing back.
One of the major complaints over the years has been “why are you doing a conference in January in Chattanooga?”
And, well, the answer was equally simple and stupid: that’s how it’s always been.
No more. It’s now in April, which will be gorgeous, taking full advantage of all that Chattanooga has to offer.
Next, in recognition of the need to make Project Voice as accessible as we can, we have expanded Project Voice into three distinct components:
Project Voice 2021, the in-person conference, will take place April 12-14 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Registration is here, with Super Early Bird discounting currently available for a brief time.
Project Voice Worldwide, a virtual event, will take place afterward, on April 15-16. It will be free as a bonus for in-person conference registrants, or $99 per person otherwise. Registration is here.
Project Voice: Coast to Coast, a US tour of 25-30 cities, will take place between mid-April and June. I will hit the road and deliver a carefully-curated 60-90 minute program of what’s interesting, pioneering, and market-leading in the emergent realm of voice tech and AI.
Of course, joined by a number of friends along the way.
All in open-air venues and US national parks.
Look, if you can’t come to Project Voice…how about we come to you?
Make no mistake, there’s plenty to be excited about still remaining this year: DBW Global (publishing industry event), The Voice of Money (banking/finance), and The Voice of Gaming round out our fully-virtual event lineup.
But we’re excited about 2021.
Project Voice will be a lot of fun.
There’s a lot of catching up to do.
We hope to see you there.
This Week In Voice VIP is sponsored by our friends at DefinedCrowd. If you like what we’re doing, thank them for enabling us do it.
After raising over $50M earlier this year, they’ve launched DefinedData, a marketplace for AI training data likely of great interest to those reading this.
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