One week from now, at the VOICE Summit, I will be joining an all-star group of hearables experts on a panel titled, “How On-the-Go Hearables Expand Opportunities with Voice,” which will be moderated by Claire Mitchell, of VaynerMedia. After spending some time getting to know the fellow panelists, I can safely say that this is going to be an awesome discussion as each panelists brings a different type of expertise to the table.
Andrew Bellavia of Knowles Corp. knows more about the hardware side of hearables than anyone I know. Knowles Corp manufacturers the microphones and DSP chips that various Alexa devices are outfitted with. Along with his expertise in all things hearables-hardware, Andy wears top-of-the-line, Bluetooth hearing aids (Phonak Marvels) that he routinely communicates to Google Assistant with. He’s on the forefront of experimenting and experiencing the future of #VoiceFirst + hearables.
Rachel Batish of Audioburst will provide a unique perspective on how Audioburst is enabling a future where we can catalog, search and curate audio clips from various radio shows and podcasts. To put into simple terms what Audioburst is striving to be, it’s essentially Google, but for audio. Imagine a future where you’re driving in the car, and you use ask Audioburst to “read you updates on Netflix” and then get a curated feed of short podcast and radio clips where the broadcasters are specifically speaking about Netflix. That’s the type of perspective that Rachel will be able to provide.
Eric Seay of AudioUX co-founded a creative audio agency that aims to shape the world of audio and sonic branding. As we move into a world that is less reliant on screens and visual overlays, Eric believes that many of the visual cues that we’ve become familiar with will have audio counterparts. Logos and sonic logos. Social media likes and nano audio “likes.” Eric will surely offer interesting ways that we need to start thinking about the burgeoning world that is audio + voice-only.
Finally, Andreea Danielescu of Accenture Labs and startup, Antilipsi, works as a founder, engineer, researcher and architect around the full software stack. She’s done extensive work around experience design and gesture interaction with all different types of emerging technologies, including voice assistants. She’ll bring to the table real world experience with early implementations of hearable technologies that incorporate features like voice assistant access, sharing what limitations exist and how we can work to overcome them.
It’s sure to be an awesome discussion next Thursday. If you’re attending the Voice Summit, I hope that you’re able to join us, and if not, I’ll do my best to recap some of the key takeaways from our panel on all things hearables + voice.
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
