Schedule

7:30 AM  Registration

Session #101

8:00 AM-8:05 AM  Welcome

Bradley Metrock Host, This Week In Voice

Ian Utile Co-Founder, VoiceFirst.TV

Session #102

8:05 AM-8:40 AM  Opening Keynote:

The Data Behind Voice in the Car

Bret Kinsella Editor and Publisher, Voicebot.AI

In this opening keynote, participants will learn what the data say about consumer use of voice in the car today, how that fits into a daylong conversation with voice assistants, and what use cases are likely to emerge next. Bret will also review competition for voice in the dashboard and which technology players have position and momentum today.

Session #103

8:40 AM-8:55 AM  Bringing #VoiceFirst Experiences To The Car

Brandon Kaplan Founder & CEO, Skilled Creative

The key to successful multimodal experiences is leveraging the ability to shift based on state, device, and other important factors. In this talk, we’ll give you a deep dive into how you should creatively approach customized and personalized experiences with #VoiceFirst car experiences in mind. We will be covering multimodal strategy, state control, and creative personalization.

Session #104

8:55 AM-9:15 AM  Drivetime: Play Games While You Drive!

Niko Vuori CEO/Founder, Drivetime

Human beings are hard-wired to play games, and game developers have designed interactive experiences to fit each nook and cranny of our daily lives. But there is one notable exception: the hour every day we spend commuting to and from work, in our cars, by ourselves. Drivetime is bringing interactive entertainment to those who need it the most: the 110 million solo commuter drivers in America.

Session #105

9:15 AM-9:45 AM  PANEL: Convergence within the Car

Rachel Batish VP/Product, Audioburst

David Ciccarelli CEO, Voices.com

Fred Jacobs Owner, Jacobs Media

Audio, voice, and myriad other technologies are emerging to reshape what we expect from the modern connected car. This panel will explore how these technologies are being deployed and best practices we can expect to see moving forward.

9:45 AM-10:10 AM  Coffee Break / Review of Exhibits

Session #111

10:10 AM-10:30 AM  Voice-Enabled Apps ... in the Car

John Foster CEO, Aiqudo

We've come to rely on our mobile apps to help us get things done throughout our day, and sometimes that leads to temptation to use them in the car in circumstances that are just not safe. Current implementations either through the head unit or using Android Auto or Car Play range from limiting to outright frustrating. Aiqudo’s platform in Auto Mode gives automotive OEMs the ability to curate a branded, proprietary in-car experience that integrates drivers' and passengers' favorite mobile apps into the safe usability mode of the car's head unit. Now auto OEMs can create a unique digital platform that incorporates the inherent personalization and user choice of mobile apps into their own in-cabin environment.

Session #112

10:30 AM-10:55 AM  Voice AI in Auto: 

An Intelligent Reasoning Assistant

Rashmi Rao Senior Director, Global Accounts, Early Customer Engagement, HARMAN (A Samsung Company)

The digital life of consumers now extends across all the domains of their daily activities: at home, commuting, in the office, and on the go. Consumers are constantly switching between their digital lives and the real world to play, work, collaborate, create, and share – and doing so at an increasingly rapid pace. Speech as an interaction modality means that users can make direct requests to navigate to applications, services, and environments seamlessly and with minimum friction. With the ever-increasing number of virtual personal assistant services (VPAs) now available, there is a need to allow the user the choice to also navigate seamlessly through these diverse services. This becomes especially important in a vehicle environment. AI forms the basis of the Personal Assistant which can predict and pre-empt the needs of the user and simplify interactions with the vehicle and environment. 

Come explore the role of Voice AI in delivering seamless access to users in a vehicle environment with unique emphasis on automotive services, whether directly in the vehicle or from the home, office, or other locations and devices.

Session #113

10:55 AM-11:20 AM  Amazon Alexa In The Car

Arianne Walker Chief Evangelist, Alexa Automotive, Amazon

Despite recent advances in cloud computing, machine learning, and speech science, drivers consistently cite in-vehicle voice recognition among their top complaints. Amazon’s Alexa Auto team is addressing this gap by extending the best of Amazon Alexa into the car, and building new auto-specific features that make customers’ daily lives easier and more convenient. This session shares results of a recent consumer study and shows how Alexa helps to solve the voice challenges today and in the future.

Session #114

11:20 AM-11:40 AM  Conversational AI In The Car

Adam Emfield (Senior UX Manager, Nuance Automotive)

Science fiction introduced us to the earliest form of voice interfaces in transportation as users spoke to “Computer” on the USS Enterprise, decades before speech interfaces were a reality. They dreamed big, and helped those of us who would work on these systems in the future to dream even bigger. Today, we see artificial intelligence (AI) helping us go beyond Star Trek, where we make Conversational AI the reality. We’ll talk about advancements in technology that will drive cars in the next few years beyond the speech capabilities of the Enterprise … even if these cars are still stuck on the ground.

Session #115

11:40 AM-12:00 PM  FIRESIDE CHAT: Making The Investment In Voice

Peter Rojas Partner, Betaworks Ventures

Peter Rojas, of Betaworks Ventures, was the first investor in both Gimlet Media as well as Anchor – both recently acquired by Spotify. In a fireside chat hosted by Bradley Metrock, Peter will discuss what he sees in voice-first technology, how he views the car as its next frontier, and what other relevant trends he’s seeing emerge that may impact both.

12:00 PM-1:00 PM 

Luncheon Keynote

Session #121

1:00 PM-1:15 PM  The Original Voice-First Technology In Cars

Dave Robinett Chief Marketing Officer, #250

Before there was Echo Auto, Android Auto, Apple Carplay and others, there was the radio. Listeners would hear ads and make calls to a central line, where they could then verbally recite a keyword to have access to a promotion or prize. #250 is fusing this old-school approach with new-school voice assistants to add value to the modern car experience to create 100% accessibility to any Alexa skill or voice-activated app – independent of who owns the car’s dashboard.

Session #122

1:15 PM-1:30 PM  Designing Voice-Enabled Screens In Cars

Obaid Ahmed CEO, Botmock

This talk explores best practices around designing experiences for voice-enabled screens in cars. We’ll discuss the process of planning, prototyping, and testing these experiences to better understand user needs and balance safety and convenience, while providing a great experience to the user.

Session #123

1:30 PM-1:55 PM  Google Assistant for the End-to-End Journey in Cars

Andrew Ku UX Designer, Google

The experience of driving doesn’t just start at the moment when the wheels start rolling. It also comes right before and after a drive. Google Assistant aims to help people with their journey end-to-end on more auto surfaces. Come join this session and learn about Assistant team’s thinking on designing voice and multimodal interactions for the end-to-end journey in cars.

Session #124

1:55 PM-2:10 PM  The Significant Difference Between VUI and VUX (And Why That Matters For Cars)

Jon Myers CEO, Earplay

Differentiating between voice user experience, and the voice user interface, is a nuanced exercise that takes on even more subtlety inside the modern connected car. In this session we’ll walk through the considerations of designing voice experiences inside the car, and why this distinction matters to those thinking about and working with vehicles and voice.

2:10 PM-2:35 PM Networking / Review of Exhibits

Session #131

2:35 PM-2:50 PM  ///class.stocks.miles Thinking Differently About Voice, Location, and Navigation

Ashley Marie Cashion VP / Head of Automotive, what3words

what3words is the world's first addressing system designed for voice. what3words has divided the world into a grid of 3 meters by 3 meters — 57 trillion squares, total — and each has been assigned a unique 3-word address – made of three dictionary words. This global location technology is already being used in a variety of voice applications, from entering an address into Mercedes-Benz and Ford navigation systems, to ordering an Uber via Amazon Alexa and directing drone deliveries. Come join the discussion to explore actual use cases, and the potential for improved speech recognition accuracy and reliability by using just 3 words to navigate anywhere in the world.

Session #132

2:50 PM-3:05 PM  Measuring Voice: Bringing Voice-Based Surveys To The Modern Connected Car

Stuart Crane CEO, Voice Metrics

Brands, retailers, and media companies all want to learn more about their customers and the satisfaction with their experience -- immediately after the interaction. But surveys are falling flat and being ignored. With the Connected Car, VOICE SURVEYS give the brand an amazing new way to interact with their customer/audience, gather information, and keep the relationship going.

Session #133

3:05 PM-3:40 PM  Closing Keynote:

Embedded and Cloud: How Connected Cars Are Leading in Voice

Katie McMahon VP/GM, SoundHound, Inc.

This session will explore current and future trends that have emerged for Voice AI in automobiles. As the auto industry becomes reimagined with cloud-connected vehicles, the in-car voice experience can shape mass market behavior and user experience norms, elevating the expectation for natural, conversational interfaces that perform consistently and also enable brand differentiation. We'll explore how the auto industry is driving innovation and where the new opportunities exist. 

4:00 PM-5:00 PM  Networking Reception