Monday, February 5  |  Track 1: Trends and applications

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Keynote: What are the limits of speech recognition accuracy?                                            

Xuedong Huang, Technical Fellow, Microsoft AI and Research, Microsoft  (presentation not available)

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Digital assistants and bots: A range of options

• The State of Conversational Interfaces, Yann Motte, VP of Strategy & Business Development, Nuance Communications 

• The branded company digital assistant: Its role and evolution, William Meisel, President, TMA Associates

• Conversational Interactions with Your Car, Tom Schalk, Vice President, Voice Technology, SiriusXM​

 

Automating customer service

• Kasisto Case Study – Changing the Face of Banking, Dror Oren, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder, Kasisto

• Integrating natural language understanding with applications, Deborah Dahl, Principal, Conversational Technologies​

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Options in developing a conversational assistant

• Natural Language: designing the voice interface of tomorrow, Eduardo Olvera, Director of User Experience, Nuance Cognitive Innovation Group

• Care and Feeding your Virtual Assistant, Richard Miller, Ph.D, Architect, Oracle Engagement Cloud​

 

Digital assistants in customer service

• Case study: Multi-channel troubleshooting assistant, Ingmar Kliche, Senior Project Manager, Deutsche Telekom

• Virtual assistants in customer service, George Skaff, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Enterprise Division, Nuance Communications

• A time to reinvent chatbots, Praful Krishna, CEO, Coseer

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Options in user interface design

Natural language interaction doesn't stand alone. It can be supported by GUIs and other options.

• Multimodal dialog systems for language learning, Vikram Ramanarayanan, Research Scientist, Educational Testing Service

• Balancing Human Senses: The Key to Natural, Intuitive Augmented Reality?, Catelyn Orsini, Voice Interface Architect, Plantronics

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The voice and personality of your application

The quality, naturalness, and "personality" of speech from an automated system can be a major determinant of its effectiveness.​

• The voice of your application, Dan Bagley, Executive Chairman, Cepstral

• Branded TTS voices for multi-domain virtual agent IVR, David Teeple, Senior Linguist Manager, Speech Morphing, Inc.

• Affect in Bot Conversations, Wolf Paulus, Principal Engineer, Intuit

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Tuesday, February 6  |  Track 1: Trends and applications

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Making workers more efficient​

• Analytics Powered by Conversation, Adrien Schmidt, CEO, Bouquet

• Mobile Voice Interaction for Outdoor Workers:  Updated Case Study in Agriculture, John Swansey, Co-founder and Chief Design Officer, AgVoice

 

Options in natural language automation

• Abandon These Design Patterns to Build Better Conversational Experiences, Cami Williams, Senior Alexa Evangelist, Amazon

• Using the Technology of Conversation to Build Better Technology for Conversation, Peggy Szymanski, Conversation Analyst, IBM Almaden Research Lab

 

Customer service with natural language

• Effortless Customer Care Utilizing AI and Human Understanding, Michael Johnston, Director of Research & Innovation, Interactions

• Overcoming Barriers to Conversational Customer Care, Matthew Shomphe, Convergys

 

Digital Assistants in the Enterprise

• Conversational AI: What we’ve learned from millions of AI conversations for thousands of customers, Sid J Reddy, Chief Scientist, Conversica

• Retail’s Impending Demise: are the rumors greatly exaggerated? How Theatro is using speech technology to transform brick-and-mortal retail, Jesse Montgomery, Senior Speech Technologist, Theatro Labs

• Enterprise Digital Assistants Patterns & Use Cases, Editt Gonen-Friedman, Product Owner, Natural Language Interfaces, Oracle CX Cloud Mobile, Oracle Corporation

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Keynote: Using Voice to Transform Retail, Andrew Sun, VP of Strategic Partnerships, Walmart

 

Carrying on the Conversation

• Amazon Alexa: What, why, and why now?, Christina Meyer, Senior UX Designer, Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) team, Amazon

• Would You Care to Try a Chardonnay?, Lisa Michaud, Director, Natural Language Processing, Aspect

 

Fitting the application: Differences driven by the environment and the user

• Aspects of Virtual Assistance for the Elderly, Nava Shaked, Faculty, HIT- Holon Institute of Technology

• Chatbots from First Principles, Tim R. Connelly, Founder, CEO/CFO, Siliconic Home

 

Challenges in conversational interaction

• On Making the Web Voice Friendly, Vinita Atre, UX, Associate Designer, Witlingo

• Bot-to-Bot Conversations - Automated Testing for Empathetic Interaction in Healthcare, Peter Boda, Co-Founder and Head of Patient Experience, lumila.us

 

Monday, February 5  |  Track 2: How to do it right

 

Building digital assistants for home devices

• Your Voice Assistant in the Home, Eduardo Olvera, Director of User Experience, Nuance Cognitive Innovation Group

• On Product Managing the Launch of an Alexa Skill, Navya Nayaki Yelloji, Product Manager, Witlingo

• The Easiest Way to Create an Alexa Skill or Google Action, Diego Ventura, CEO and founder, noHold

 

Speech Recognition and natural language technology

• Cognitive Architectures: The Third Wave of Conversational Agents, Peter Voss, Founder and CEO, AGI Innovations Inc

• Capturing Voice Characteristics in a conversational interface, Brian Garr,  Chief Revenue Officer, GoVivace

 

Creating an effective user experience

• Prosody for Conversational Discourse, Joseph Tyler, Conversation Designer, Sensely

• Making Good Conversation: Tips for Bots and Their Humans, Sondra Ahlén, Principal VUI Consultant and Owner, SAVIC

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Delivering what users want

• What you need to know about training the digital virtual agent, Brett Knight, Digital Product Manager, United Services Automobile Association (USAA)

• 10 Key Learnings From Having Built more than 100 Chatbots, Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder & CEO, Haptik

• Multi-Factor Voice, Leor Grebler, CEO, UCIC

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Creating effective Conversational User Interfaces

• Setting Up Your Bots for Conversational Success, Rurik Bradbury, Global Head of Conversational Strategy, LivePerson

• It’s not just how you say it, it’s what you say: Improving response generation in conversational agents, Marie Meteer, Associate Professor, Brandeis University

 

Building conversational systems in difficult environments

• Hands-Free Computing - Real World Devices using Voice, Chris Parkinson, Chief Technology Officer, RealWear

• Talking Heads are Invading Your Car, David Colleen, CEO, SapientX

• Creating High-Fidelity Conversations in a Low-Fidelity Environment, Cathy Pearl, VP of User Experience, Sensely

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Tuesday, February 6 |  Track 2: How to do it right

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Speech recognition in difficult environments

• Harnessing Signal DNA: Bringing AI to the Cocktail Party, Hamid Nawab, Chief Scientist, Yobe

• Designing Conversational AI Devices in a Day, Saleel Awsare, Vice President and General Manager, Audio and Imaging Business, Synaptics

 

Building conversational systems

• Conversational building blocks, what it takes to build great conversational experiences, Nicolas Acosta, Director of Product, Twilio

• Using Analytics to Personalize the Conversation, Stephanie Laureys, Director of Client Services, Versay Solutions, LLC

 

Naturally! Not so easy

• How to save time optimizing bots, Ofer Ronen, General Manager, Chatbase

• Wanted: Conversational UX Designers, Bob Moore, Research Scientist, IBM Research-Almaden​

 

Panel: Dialog Management as a Key Technology for Conversational Systems (presentation not available)

• Ilya Gelfenbeyn, Lead Product Manager, Dialogflow at Google

• Alborz Geramifard, Machine Learning Manager at Amazon

• Nirmal Mukhi, Master Inventor at IBM Watson Education

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Building voice-interactive systems

• Deploying Speech Recognition and Biometrics in Consumer Electronics...what we learned in real world experience, Locke Chastaine, Director of Licensing & Corporate Counsel, Sensory

• Voice in Autonomous Vehicles, Lisa Falkson, Voice User Interface Expert, Consultant

• Successful Use of Conversational Systems in Education in Asia, David Topolewski, CEO, Qooco

 

Natural language tools: A wide range of options

• Linguistic vs machine learning? Why the real winner is a mixed approach, Zachary Wilkins, Senior Computational Linguist, Artificial Solutions

• Got Data? The Importance of High-Quality Data for Building Effective Language-Based Solutions, James Lyle, Director, Custom Linguistic Solutions, Appen

 

Options you should know about

• Next frontier in Interactive Advertising, Jagadish Nomula, CTO, Voicy.ai

• Why broader language understanding matters in vertical applications, Eugene Joseph, Founder and CEO, North Side Inc.

• Multi-modality and Trust In Conversational Interfaces, Mark Stephen Meadows, Founder & CEO, Botanic Technologies

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