Coming Monday: for International Women’s Day (Monday, March 8), we’ll highlight a large number of outstanding women leaders and pioneers across the world of voice/AI.
The long-dominant leading use case for voice assistants is playing music, and it has been that way right from the start.
During the pandemic, many users expanded their horizons by exploring new and different functions voice assistants could perform. However, music remained on top as the main voice/AI use case.
As a result, we’ve announced earlier this week that we’re doing a music festival / concert series called Euphonious.
Euphonious takes place over Father’s Day weekend (June 18-20) in Birmingham, Alabama, which is perfect when you consider the need to bring voice technology and AI to new frontiers and new cities beyond the usual suspects.
Tickets have sold briskly, well on the way to a sold out event, and some percentage of the attendance will be folks flying in from across the country for what will be one of the first, if not the first, music festivals in the United States. As a result, plenty of national media is expected.
Families and companies can buy a “socially-distanced square” which gives them a tract of land to call their own for each evening, hosting up to 8 people, all outdoors.
In conjunction with Euphonious, we will host what we call Project Voice Regional Briefings, where we introduce leading voice/AI companies across numerous verticals to Fortune 1000 CEOs based in the Southeast, in what will be powerful networking and business relationship building leading up to some great live music.
A percentage of proceeds from the event will go to United Ability, a charity that helps make the world more accessible for disabled individuals, and actually caught our attention through their innovative use of voice assistants and smart speakers to serve their communities.
The rest of this letter are the best tunes from some of the participating artists.
The Spotify playlist for Euphonious is here, the event website is here, and the event registration page is here.
Enjoy. Have a great weekend. Back on Monday.
Blues Traveler is the quintessential 90’s nostalgia act. Incredible musicians and great songwriters. Their song “Hook” discusses how no one cares what the band actually says, as long as they say it with conviction, and that’s probably fairly accurate for the first live music to return to the stage in over a year.
Moon Taxi is an ascendant jam/rock act that’s built a strong career by being an amazing live band. They’ve headlined numerous festivals before COVID set in, and glad to have them at Euphonious.
Husband/wife duo Drew and Ellie Holcomb are the closest thing we have today to a real-life Johnny and June Carter Cash.
Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver has been nominated for 7 Grammys over the years, played with Paul Simon, and has entered the pantheon of bluegrass legends.
Angie Aparo made waves as an alt-rocker in the 1990’s, before adding prolific Nashville singer/songwriter to his resume, penning #1 hits for Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and others.
Sister Hazel has been a pop/rock mainstay the last 20 years or so, and has the distinction of having made some nice business moves that have made them unique: a cruise line, a beer, and all sorts of other stuff. Heavy on nostalgia.