Since the onset of the pandemic in the U.S., data from Acast has shown that podcasts aren’t just for your commute to work. In this episode, Tess Neudeck, Marketing Marketing, Americas for Acast, and Emily Binder talk finding guests for your show, the future of podcasting, and how to monetize your podcast.
Jason Fields, Chief Strategy Officer, Voicify
Jason Fields is Chief Strategy Officer at Voicify, a top CMS (content management system) for designing voice experiences on Alexa and Google Assistant. Jason and Emily discussed the meaning of multimodal design for voice assistants and why this kind of conversation design matters. How can brands create experiences for customers to interact with a voice assistant from different devices with varying screen sizes or no screen at all? It’s all about context.
Overall, the question becomes: How do we connect and organize a variety of communicable assets in a way that meets basic (and reasonable) audience expectations? Jason and Voicify have created a free downloadable guide about modality for brands.
Amazon Echo Show 5 - an entry level multimodal smart speaker (voice + visual)
Multimodality in voice experiences
Johnnie Walker tasting Alexa skill - good example
Saucony is doing a nice job in audio responses and visual components with emotive vs instructive images in specific parts of the conversation (this is sensitivity to multimodality)
Images should match the conversation tone (e.g. a dispassionate conversation about product features should be accompanied by a feature set image, not models wearing the product out in the world)
“How do I get to your store?” should show a map - seems obvious but isn’t being done often enough
Use case for multimodal experiences: a woman getting ready for a flight. The experience could contain or present information to assist customer with: packing, organizing, car service, check flight time, traffic, terminal location, gate, TSA status, etc. - all the devices information can be displayed should take advantage of screen space and contextual data such as location.
Voicify can detect type of voice assistant device (such as Echo Auto or smart TV or mobile phone or smart watch) and respond appropriately based on context and device, even offering secondary information such as gate update
Key: suss out what information is most useful to user at that moment and how best to present it visually and with sound: first, map user intention
Brands have been assembling digital assets for twenty years: we have vast libraries so it should be simple to assign a framework to these assets
Jason’s podcast recommendation: Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Twitter: @Voicify
Author and keynote speaker Kate O'Neill is known around the world as The Tech Humanist. Hear her thoughtful approach to keeping technology human and what it will take for emerging technology to be successful from a business standpoint.
Hear the human centered approach to voice and AI. Emily and Kate also discuss oncoming voice tech issues such as deep fakes and privacy issues such as data mining by Facebook and other tech companies.
03:15 How do we approach voice design from a human centric way that is also good for business?
04:30 Weather skill example - take context about what someone using the skill needs, like an umbrella
05:20 Business might build voice tech or other tech in order to check a box but it’s better to build for the person on the other end
06:00 Don’t ask, “What’s our AI strategy?”. Instead, step back and ask, “What are we trying to accomplish as a business? - Kate
07:00 Who are we building for and how can we serve their needs?”
06:20 Create alignment and relevance between the business and people outside it
07:10 Avoid unintended consequences of technology as it becomes capable of such scale
07:35 Google Translatotron and deep fakes: Translatotron translates spoken word into another language while retaining the VOICE of the original speaker.
Anatomy of a Babel fish as explained in the BBC TV series: “The Babel fish is a small, bright yellow fish, which can be placed in someone's ear in order for them to be able to hear any language translated into their first language.”
08:20 How we should approach technology that reminds us of the Babel fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? The Translatotron’s simultaneous translation does not lose integrity originating from the sound of your voice. But one step further: there is sampling of your voice that is sufficient for ML (machine learning) and AI to synthesize your voice.
08:45 Sampling: Google would now have your voice - what will they do with it? Voice synthesis and deep fakes - the terrifying possibilities (overall: cool but scary)
09:30 Companies must govern themselves (e.g. Google)
09:50 Government has a responsibility to regulate privacy and data models
10:40 Kate doesn’t have smart speakers in her home because we don’t have a precedent for protecting user data, she says
11:20 Facebook Ten Year Challenge (Kate’s tweet went viral in January 2019 over the ten year old photo trend next to current photos of themselves) - she pointed out that this data could be training facial recognition algorithms on predicting aging
Facebook's '10 Year Challenge' Is Just a Harmless Meme—Right? : “Opinion: The 2009 vs. 2019 profile picture trend may or may not have been a data collection ruse to train its facial recognition algorithm. But we can't afford to blithely play along.”
13:20 We have seen memes and games that ask you to provide structured information turn out to be data mining (e.g. Cambridge Analytica): we have good reason to be cautious
14:40 "Everything we do online is a genuine representation of who we are as people, so that data really should be treated with the utmost respect and protection. Unfortunately, it isn't always." - Kate O’Neill
15:00 Do we need government to regulate tech? Can it?
16:10 “Ask forgiveness, not permission” is clearly the case with Facebook so why do users seem to be forgiving?
20:00 What might a future social network look like in which there are fewer privacy and data mining concerns?
Bonus info:
Deep fake (a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake") is a technique for human image synthesis based on artificial intelligence. It is used to combine and superimpose existing images and videos onto source images or videos using a machine learning technique known as generative adversarial network.
Read more about deep fakes and voice emulation: the idea of voice skins and impersonation for fraud
Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Alexa at Amazon
Guest: Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Amazon Alexa. We discussed Alexa Flash Briefing and the future of AI and how it will teach us about ourselves. The killer app is the connection. Part 2 of 2. (Listen to Part 1.)
We also answered a top question among marketers: how do you overcome discoverability challenges with early voice to get your Alexa skill found?
Friendly reminder: please mute your Alexa device before listening.
1:05 Flash Briefing - a consistent way to engage your customers. Beats a silly CEO email no one opens. This is a better company update.
2:00 "I want to engage and connect on a human level”
Cross modalities to drive engagements
2:45 Teri Fisher - Voice First Health Podcast: using SEO to share and promote all his Flash Briefings (Alexa in Canada, the top briefing in Canada). Put all the briefings onto a blog. This is how to harness Flash Briefing across modalities and web as well as helping your SEO.
3:20 You offer customers value. You must give. Pippa.io is a good tool to get your briefings embedded into your site with a simple widget which is also search-friendly (thanks for sponsoring our show, Pippa!) Here’s how it looks for the Voice Marketing Flash Briefing:
Get a $25 Amazon Gift Card when you sign up for Pippa to host your podcast or Flash Briefing!
4:00 What do you see coming down the pike as far as interaction within Flash Briefing? How do we move from passive to interactive, if we do at all - in voice experiences?
4:30 Dave: I’m a product person. I love consumer devices. I feel strongly that you want someone to get a new idea or understand how something will work, it must be a physical product. That was Echo. People want devices that work with Alexa. That customer sentiment has evolved - the future will be similar.
7:50 Alexa Conversations
8:00 The future of voice
8:20 We as humans don't think in terms of TASKS but in terms of scenarios, ideas, and things we want to get done (re:MARS example)
9:35 Burn your current ideas down. AI will help. Existentialism.
11:00 There is no killer voice app. The killer thing is the relationship and context with AI. Like a long friendship - it’s not any one aspect that makes it meaningful, it’s the entire relationship.
Dave Kemp from Oaktree Products is an expert on hearables, which are smart, wireless in-ear devices such as AirPods. And they’re probably the future of voice, more so than smart speakers.
Dave and Emily talked about ambient computing from Alexa to wearables to the connected car. And interestingly we touched on the dire need for curated content to replace the noisy and overwhelming experience of social media today. Plus, hear how Alexa Flash Briefing might be the first iteration of that improved content experience.
AirPods are Apple's most popular accessory product, with 35 million units sold in 2018 alone.
Hearables including AirPods and competitor products such as Samsung Galaxy Buds, Pixel Buds, Microsoft Surface headset
5:10 Amazon hearables in late half of 2019 (competitor to AirPods)
Apple's new H1 chip in v2 AirPods shows that Apple is dedicated to AirPods for the long term (beyond using the W1 chip from Apple Watch), now AirPods have their own chip architecture just for hearables
First application is "Hey Siri" activation (no tapping required)
7:10 Bret Kinsella helped people visualize importance of the smart speaker as training wheels, a conditional device to make people comfortable with the voice assistant, offloading smartphone related tasks to VAs. But hearables are really riding the bike.
The near-field voice assistant is key (smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home and Apple HomePod are far field)
9:00 We have to recognize there has been a dramatic behavioral shift since 2016
It has becomes socially acceptable to wear in-ear devices all the time
9:20 Form factors are developing: earrings (fashionable hearables) and Bose AR frames with speakers near the ear could be the future
9:40 Hearing aids as a form factor allow for usage that is super discreet - moving away from stigma today and to all-day usage
Passively consuming content while synced to digital environment - all day usage is plausible
10:30 Emily's Bluetooth headache - how can we minimize exposure to EMFs from a health standpoint?
11:00 AirPods case could become the receiver vs streaming content from phone to AirPods. Content could be housed in the AirPod case and streamed in a lower bandwidth from the edge vs the cloud.
11:20 Outfitting our bodies with technology - what are the health implications for heavy EMFs (Electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) are invisible areas of energy, often referred to as radiation) - hear a quick Flash Briefing about why EMFs are a problem - TBD…
12:25 Flash Briefing and passive consumption of content
Flash Briefing is a gem
Dave’s Flash Briefing (Future Ear Radio) is his daily blog post on futurear.co then the briefing is a 60 second tease about the blog post (a promotional vehicle to his blog post)
Flash Briefing should be the star of the smart speaker - such a powerful use case
14:00 This is the precursor to audio social media, consuming on demand the content you want to consume from your favorite sources (curated feed)
Amazon should be featuring Flash Briefing more but now it's relegated to the Settings area of the Alexa app
How can we put the Flash Briefing idea on other platforms?
15:15 We are so overwhelmed with social media- what if you could Google Reader / RSS all that content?
Ways to better curate your attention and cut out the noise
We love Twitter but it requires so much parsing - what does the future hold and how can voicefirst make passive content consumption better?
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I spoke with Austin-based professional voice actor Melanie Scroggins, Owner of Melanie Scroggins Voiceover. Melanie found me based on my tweets about junk skills (Alexa skills with no content that are squatting on search terms).
Her story resonated with me because it opens the door to a larger conversation about how we value and pay talent.
For voice actors who are providing the important sonic branding that we in the voice community are effusive about, communities like SpokenLayer are underpaying freelancers to a surprising degree.
This hopefully serves as a conversation starter. Let’s openly discuss these things so we can create a better place for everyone, from users and customers to developers, brands, voice actors, and content creators.
We mentioned:
Here is the rate guide for GVAA (Global Voice Academy)
While this is a standard rate sheet a lot of voice actors use to rate out projects, there
actually is no end all be all. It's really up to the individual actor, but
this provides a solid foundation on which to start charging.
Year-end episode. Predictions - keeping it simple, two areas of focus:
Social media - tech companies and their manipulation-based business models will change. They’ll evolve in two ways: First, greater transparency that frustrated users will seek. Second, more cohesion with government (as Steve Case posits in The Third Wave).
Facebook (including Instagram), Twitter, and LinkedIn: the revenue models are based on manipulation through constant feedback loops that surveil users (the product). This is the new fast food. Users will begin to see it as unhealthy like they do cigarettes and Big Macs.
Voice marketing - why smart speakers and voice assistants are like the automobile in 1903 (famous Ford/Horace Rackham quote). Voice is not a fad.
1-minute clip:
Also mentioned:
06:40 - Brian Roemmele, The Oracle of Voice re: “computerese” - Brian is spot on. 06:40
08:16 - Mitch Joel (I quote Mitch re: the 1.0 state of smart speakers and how it’s like the internet before the hyperlink - hard to navigate). Spot on again.
Join me at The Alexa Conference on January 15-17, 2019. Get 20% off tickets with promo code: ALEXASPRK203
Hear my conversation with Brielle Nickoloff, Voice UX Designer at Witlingo. We discussed what the startup is doing to help podcasters, politicians, entrepreneurs, authors, comedians, and other content creators or personal brand promoters get voice skills onto Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant quickly and easily.
“Castlingo is the easiest way to publish short audios to let your audience listen to what you have to say.”
Brielle Nickoloff is a Lead of Voice User Experience Design and Research at Witlingo, a Washington D.C., based startup that builds products and solutions for Voice First devices and platforms, such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana.
Brielle earned dual Bachelor’s degrees in Linguistics and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Much of Brielle’s research in the space began with a closer look at the ways one’s emotional reaction to a voice interface is notably more inflated than reactions to other types of user interfaces. She loves to design for maximally accessible and minimally intrusive technology by leveraging the beauty of natural human language.
40% of adults now use voice search once per day. Read more Voice First Facts from Witlingo.
Follow Brielle Nickoloff on Twitter: @ElleForLanguage (I love her handle!)
