Jun 15, 2020

Open Voice #106: Rabobank, agencies at VoiceLunch, free SSML course, patterns, and a good Voice news source (where we get it from...) list.

By Maarten • Issue #106 • View online

Hi {{first_name}},

Every week we collect the developments in the Voice domain into a single list of things you shouldn’t have missed. But before we dive into the news, here’s more on the other channels we work on.

🎧 Voicecast

Check the latest version of the Voicecast: Bart Bellefroid from Rabobank on the most recent voice developments with one of the popular banks in The Netherlands. You can listen to this episode via your browser, or better yet: subscribe in iTunes or Spotify.

🌮🌮🌮 #VoicelunchNL

The theme we will discuss is the state of the Dutch market through the eyes of the makers, agencies and designers. Seriously, what are good ways to make money surfing the voice wave? What questions do we all get? Is it hard to explain what we do? Is it ready te be called its own category? (duh!) Seriously, is there too much or too little work?

This week a bit earlier to fit the schedule of Maarten’s VoiceGlobal talk:

Wednesday 11:30 to 12:30. Zoom link. Add to Gcal, iCal, Outlook. Join the discussion at discussvoice.com

Now, on with the news!

🇳🇱 Free course on SSML (in Dutch)

Maaike Groenewege shared a free course to get you started on Voice and SSML. The course is in Dutch and covers not just technical SSML, but also a lot of the technicalities of language (Maaike knows a thing or two when it comes to linguistics). A great course for those who speak Dutch to better understand SSML.

learn.convocat.nl • Share

👩‍🏫 Contextual Word Representations: Putting Words into Computers

How are words put into computers? This story is is part of the story of the field of natural language processing (NLP). This article gives you a general understanding of word vectors (also known as word embeddings): why they exist, what problems they solve, where they come from, how they have changed over time, and what open questions exist about them. If you’re looking to better understand the basics, without getting into rocket science, this might be worth your time.

dl.acm.org • Share

👨‍🏫 Design patterns in voice interfaces

In graphic interfaces, we are used to talking about design and interaction patterns. We use them all the time to deal with any user need. Those patterns are nothing but well-known solutions that users are already familiar with.

The boom of voice interfaces as a “new” interaction channel makes you wonder if there is any similar artefact in voice design that we can use in our voice user interfaces. Jesus Martin helps you get a grasp of the design patterns for Voice UIs.

uxdesign.cc • Share

Allen "Prisoner" Firstenberg

@afirstenberg

This was a FANTASTIC @VoiceLunch this morning with Bob Moore of IBM, talking about his Natural Conversation framework.

Some notes from what he said today.

(As an aside - do you know how many people named Robert J Moore seem to work in technology? A lot.) https://t.co/w3IeQU4anu

5:33 PM - 11 Jun 2020

🦆 Hey Google, ik wil praten met ‘De Donald Duck’

Another Dutch link (get your google Translate ready!). Learn more about the Donald Duck Google Action. It contains everything you’d expect for a casestudy!

www.eguide.nl • Share

🔑 Bringing Google Assistant features to all smart devices

You can set up Voice Match to get personalized results on more smart speakers and choose your preferred speaker to play music with Google Assistant.

www.blog.google • Share

🎮 Voice will be the new standard of how you interact with your gaming console

This week the #PlayStation5 event showed a bit more of their upcoming console. How will Voice change the gaming experience?

www.linkedin.com • Share

Join Maarten this Wednesday, June 17th at 12:30 CET and 6:30AM EST for his #VOICEglobal talk about #ProjectZilver:

“Elderly & Voice: A Natural Opportunity” including how they did the 10K give away.

😷 Voice is Leading The Charge For Creating A New Normal

How big will voice-based interfaces become in 2020, and how will we use voice differently? This question is on the minds of behavioralists, technologists, and businesses everywhere as we all adapt to/create a new normal.

hackernoon.com • Share

Mark Tucker - #BlackLivesMatter

@marktucker

For those new to Voice App creation, this is my recommendation on where to start. My bias is a developer that codes in JavaScript/Node.
#VoiceFirst #VoiceDev #VoiceTech @alexadevs @ActionsOnGoogle @BixbyDevelopers @jovotech @dabblelab @VoiceflowHQ @voiceappdevs https://t.co/PN6F1oHD2q

1:40 AM - 11 Jun 2020

More inspiration? The best 💌 around!

We like good newsletters on Voice, so why not share a couple of other great sources for inspiration/insight:

Voicebot Insider is not free, but it’s quality voice reporting every single week. More information here at the Patreon
Voicing Tree is a great source. I should reach out to Dave and Collin to see how they do their sourcing, because their radar consistently finds a lot of gems. Check out the latest edition here. (I like the story about the new Russian MIG fighters getting an assistant 🤯)
Voice Chops Tuesday by our friend Carl Robinson is your source if you are geared a bit more to the technical end of the spectrum. Last issue can be found here.
Voice Works is mainly about flashbriefings. Still, I think that’s a format that’s very closely related to the smart speaker/assistant and overlaps well with the people here. Here is their latest edition.