Kicking off the 2022 event season at Project Voice

It was a beautiful week in Chattanooga, where Bradley Metrock’s annual Project Voice conference took place. This touchstone event for the industry included dozens of speakers from organizations leveraging voice to do everything from the mundane (with dramatically improved accessibility) to the downright inspiring. Standout examples of the latter include National Geographic, collecting, cataloging, and publishing 3d soundscapes and associated metadata from adventurers in the field in locations worldwide. 

Currently, this content provides an excellent backdrop to conversation flows and other Nat Geo audio products. But it didn’t take much imagination to envision how they might leverage these sounds and metadata, including information like the direction of the source, to create exceptionally immersive, virtual experiences. 

Unsurprisingly, the metaverse came up more than once this week. Although there were no concrete examples showcasing the intersection of voice user interface and virtual experiences, everyone can see and agrees upon the enormous opportunity ahead. At Voicify, we agree, and we’re working on integrations with the underlying infrastructure that will power the space. 

On the other hand, there was more than one live demonstration of real-time speech-to-text capture and conversation analysis. The week started with an inspiring welcome from Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly, captured by Deepgram and analyzed by Cyrano.ai. Later that same day, Cyrano impressed the audience with a detailed read-out of their actionable insights and analysis of the Mayor. 

Yobe also gave an awe-inspiring live demonstration of their voice capture technology. Yobe’s innovative approach leverages AI to simulate the human auditory system to capture individual voices within a noisy intake signal. During their particularly slick demo, the tech accurately captured speech in some boisterous environments, including a busy street and a construction site.    

The emerging and essential role voice plays in improving accessibility was another recurring theme last week. During the Amazon keynote, they shared a few stories about innovations with Alexa, including “Alexa, what am I holding?“

Later in the day, Justin Lundy, founder of GetLundy.io talked about his mission to make the Real Estate process more accessible with conversational AI. Lundy’s goal is to increase participation in the real estate buying process by creating the most comprehensive property search engine available by voice.

This focus on accessibility mapped to a broader theme around the increasing importance of voice. Organizations in attendance at Project Voice seem to be in lock-step agreement that voice is no longer a novelty, restricted to shallow, single-turn experiences in the smart speaker ecosystem, or merely finding ways to squeeze the cost out of contact centers. Many are looking at voice to improve lives by improving the state of human-computer interactions.

At Project Voice, Voicify took the stage for a fireside chat with Bradley Metrock to discuss our strategic pivot to providing the only end-to-end solution for delivering enterprise-owned custom voice assistants. The discussion covered:

• What are custom voice assistants, and how are they different?
• Why do custom assistants matter to brands?
• What are some great examples of custom voice assistants? 
• What benefits do custom assistants provide to users?
• What trends are driving this pivot? 

Project Voice is the first of three voice-focused events in 2022, and it was great to get together and share space with people again. In addition to learning about all the great things our peers have been up to, we made some solid new connections and reinforced old friendships both on the conference floor and at the sold-out social events. You can get a full recap from the event organizers here. 

Looking ahead

Next up on the calendar for voice-focused events, our Chief Product Officer Alex Dunn will join Sanket Shinde, Voice AI Solutions Architect at Volkswagen, on the main stage at Modev’s Voice Global 2022 at 11 AM on June 16th. Together, they will talk about custom voice assistants and our work on the Volkswagen We Connect ID. App.  

Later this year, we’re thrilled to be getting back together with the community in person at Voice Summit 2022. Also organized by our good friends at Modev, Voice Summit is happening in Arlington, Va, from October 10th to the 13th.  

Voicify also participates in smaller virtual events throughout the year, and we publish recaps in our articles section. Here’s the most recent, when we talked about custom voice assistants with Pete Erickson. 

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