
The Applied Voice Input Output Society

Conversational Interaction Conference 2018 Presentations
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
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The State of Conversational Interfaces, Yann Motte, VP of Strategy & Business Development, Nuance Communications
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The branded company digital assistant: Its role and evolution, William Meisel, President, TMA Associates
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Conversational Interactions with Your Car, Tom Schalk, Vice President, Voice Technology, SiriusXM​
Automating customer service
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Kasisto Case Study – Changing the Face of Banking, Dror Oren, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder, Kasisto
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Integrating natural language understanding with applications, Deborah Dahl, Principal, Conversational Technologies​
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Options in developing a conversational assistant
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Natural Language: designing the voice interface of tomorrow, Eduardo Olvera, Director of User Experience, Nuance Cognitive Innovation Group
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Care and Feeding your Virtual Assistant, Richard Miller, Ph.D, Architect, Oracle Engagement Cloud​
Digital assistants in customer service
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Case study: Multi-channel troubleshooting assistant, Ingmar Kliche, Senior Project Manager, Deutsche Telekom
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Virtual assistants in customer service, George Skaff, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Enterprise Division, Nuance Communications
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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.
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Multimodal dialog systems for language learning, Vikram Ramanarayanan, Research Scientist, Educational Testing Service
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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.​
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The voice of your application, Dan Bagley, Executive Chairman, Cepstral
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Branded TTS voices for multi-domain virtual agent IVR, David Teeple, Senior Linguist Manager, Speech Morphing, Inc.
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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​
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Analytics Powered by Conversation, Adrien Schmidt, CEO, Bouquet
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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
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Abandon These Design Patterns to Build Better Conversational Experiences, Cami Williams, Senior Alexa Evangelist, Amazon
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Using the Technology of Conversation to Build Better Technology for Conversation, Peggy Szymanski, Conversation Analyst, IBM Almaden Research Lab
Customer service with natural language
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Effortless Customer Care Utilizing AI and Human Understanding, Michael Johnston, Director of Research & Innovation, Interactions
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Overcoming Barriers to Conversational Customer Care, Matthew Shomphe, Convergys
Digital Assistants in the Enterprise
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Conversational AI: What we’ve learned from millions of AI conversations for thousands of customers, Sid J Reddy, Chief Scientist, Conversica
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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
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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
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Amazon Alexa: What, why, and why now?, Christina Meyer, Senior UX Designer, Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) team, Amazon
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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
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Aspects of Virtual Assistance for the Elderly, Nava Shaked, Faculty, HIT- Holon Institute of Technology
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Chatbots from First Principles, Tim R. Connelly, Founder, CEO/CFO, Siliconic Home
Challenges in conversational interaction
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On Making the Web Voice Friendly, Vinita Atre, UX, Associate Designer, Witlingo
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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
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Your Voice Assistant in the Home, Eduardo Olvera, Director of User Experience, Nuance Cognitive Innovation Group
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On Product Managing the Launch of an Alexa Skill, Navya Nayaki Yelloji, Product Manager, Witlingo
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The Easiest Way to Create an Alexa Skill or Google Action, Diego Ventura, CEO and founder, noHold
Speech Recognition and natural language technology
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Cognitive Architectures: The Third Wave of Conversational Agents, Peter Voss, Founder and CEO, AGI Innovations Inc
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Capturing Voice Characteristics in a conversational interface, Brian Garr, Chief Revenue Officer, GoVivace
Creating an effective user experience
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Prosody for Conversational Discourse, Joseph Tyler, Conversation Designer, Sensely
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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
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What you need to know about training the digital virtual agent, Brett Knight, Digital Product Manager, United Services Automobile Association (USAA)
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10 Key Learnings From Having Built more than 100 Chatbots, Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder & CEO, Haptik
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Multi-Factor Voice, Leor Grebler, CEO, UCIC
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Creating effective Conversational User Interfaces
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Setting Up Your Bots for Conversational Success, Rurik Bradbury, Global Head of Conversational Strategy, LivePerson
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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
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Hands-Free Computing - Real World Devices using Voice, Chris Parkinson, Chief Technology Officer, RealWear
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Talking Heads are Invading Your Car, David Colleen, CEO, SapientX
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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
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Harnessing Signal DNA: Bringing AI to the Cocktail Party, Hamid Nawab, Chief Scientist, Yobe
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Designing Conversational AI Devices in a Day, Saleel Awsare, Vice President and General Manager, Audio and Imaging Business, Synaptics
Building conversational systems
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Conversational building blocks, what it takes to build great conversational experiences, Nicolas Acosta, Director of Product, Twilio
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Using Analytics to Personalize the Conversation, Stephanie Laureys, Director of Client Services, Versay Solutions, LLC
Naturally! Not so easy
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How to save time optimizing bots, Ofer Ronen, General Manager, Chatbase
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Wanted: Conversational UX Designers, Bob Moore, Research Scientist, IBM Research-Almaden​
Panel: Dialog Management as a Key Technology for Conversational Systems (presentation not available)
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Ilya Gelfenbeyn, Lead Product Manager, Dialogflow at Google
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Alborz Geramifard, Machine Learning Manager at Amazon
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Nirmal Mukhi, Master Inventor at IBM Watson Education
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Building voice-interactive systems
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Deploying Speech Recognition and Biometrics in Consumer Electronics...what we learned in real world experience, Locke Chastaine, Director of Licensing & Corporate Counsel, Sensory
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Voice in Autonomous Vehicles, Lisa Falkson, Voice User Interface Expert, Consultant
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Successful Use of Conversational Systems in Education in Asia, David Topolewski, CEO, Qooco
Natural language tools: A wide range of options
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Linguistic vs machine learning? Why the real winner is a mixed approach, Zachary Wilkins, Senior Computational Linguist, Artificial Solutions
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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
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Next frontier in Interactive Advertising, Jagadish Nomula, CTO, Voicy.ai
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Why broader language understanding matters in vertical applications, Eugene Joseph, Founder and CEO, North Side Inc.
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Multi-modality and Trust In Conversational Interfaces, Mark Stephen Meadows, Founder & CEO, Botanic Technologies
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