Podcast appearances and mentions of dave isbitski

A technical evangelist and a marketing evangelist will each sit down to write a blog post about what evangelism is — and they'll both be right. In a position that defines itself by what needs to be reacted to, the role can be complicated to explain.We speak with Dave Isbitski, Principal Developer Advocate for Amazon Web Services, about what it really means to be an evangelist and be at the forefront of the voice-first revolution.Dave covers:What evangelism means to DaveUnderstanding the voice-first revolution2 specific questions for David & an audience challengeThis is a #FlipMyFunnel podcast. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or here.Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for Flip My Funnel in your favorite podcast player.

Today on the Sound In Marketing podcast, I concluded my talk with Amazon Alexa’s Chief Evangelist Dave Isbitski.  We covered a lot of ground exploring lots of different nuances of smart speaker capabilities both for personal and business use.  Believe me when I say we are no where near discovering all there is to know about voice but with Dave’s knowledge, this episode and the last should get you a little closer to understanding what Amazon Alexa can do.  You already know your customer and you probably already have the data at hand.  The difference and true power of voice marketing is that you’ve probably never had a customer that’s talking to you in the moment. For more tech talk, be sure to check out Dave’ podcast Alexa Dev Chat.  You can also find him on Twitter @thedavedev as well as any of the Voice First conferences and summits that are going on all over the place right now. You can also follow and subscribe to the Sound In Marketing Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Pandora, and Stitcher and don’t forget to share it with your friends.  For inquiries on producing and developing your own podcast or for inquiries on sonic branding and sonic branding consultation availabilities, you can find me at Dreamr Productions www.dreamrproductions.com, Linkedin and Facebook.  You can also email me at jeanna@dreamrproductions.com.  Let’s make this world of sound more intriguing, more unique, and more and more on brand. This episode was produced by Dreamr Productions and hosted, written, and edited by me, Jeanna Isham.  

DAVE ISBITSKI RETURNS! Today we are talking to Dave Isbitski, the Chief Evangelist for Amazon Alexa. And we have a deep discussion on the transition to a remote work society, why self branding is more important than ever before, and tips and tricks for dealing with difficult emotions. All of this, right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

Today on the Sound In Marketing podcast, I talked with Amazon Alexa’s Chief Evangelist Dave Isbitski.  We covered a lot of ground in this episode and the next exploring lots of real world usages for smart speakers in both personal and business use.   We started as an auditory society.  Talk wasn’t cheap. Talk was incredibly valuable.  Let’s bring back that art of communication. For more tech talk, be sure to check out Dave’ podcast Alexa Dev Chat.  You can also find him on Twitter @thedavedev as well as any of the Voice First conferences and summits that are going on all over the place right now. You can also follow and subscribe to the Sound In Marketing Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Pandora, and Stitcher and don’t forget to share it with your friends.  For inquiries on producing and developing your own podcast or for inquiries on sonic branding and sonic branding consultation availabilities, you can find me at Dreamr Productions www.dreamrproductions.com, Linkedin and Facebook.  You can also email me at jeanna@dreamrproductions.com.  Let’s make this world of sound more intriguing, more unique, and more and more on brand. This episode was produced by Dreamr Productions and hosted, written, and edited by me, Jeanna Isham.  

In 2016 I did my first presentation on Amazon Alexa and Echo, and at the time there were about 700 skills available. Today there are over 100K. And hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices. So, since most of us are spending more time than ever in our houses, I wanted to catch up again with Dave Isbitski, Amazon’s Chief Evangelist for Alexa and Echo. In a pretty extensive chat we had on LinkedIn Live recently, Dave shares some of the stories of how people are using Alexa/Echo and smart assistants in general during the Covid-19 pandemic, why he thinks voice technology is uniting generations, and how he sees voice playing a major role in the PC (Post Covid) era.

Episode 60 is a long one! 30 minutes of chatting with Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist for Amazon Alexa. Dave is a pioneer in the voice industry and has a Project Voice aware to prove it. In episode 60, Dave chats with Julie about how he began in the voice industry, where Alexa has been, where it is going and the intersection of Alexa and learning.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Julie Daniel Davis, a leader in the voice education space and the Director of Instructional Technology and Innovation at a private school in Chattanooga, Tennessee.Welcome, Julie!She is a go-to EdTech guru and has been doing a lot of work in her school by helping to implement voice technology in a safe and effective manner for her students. Julie has also been speaking in multiple places about the same and comes on to talk about education and using voice technology to help fulfill educational goals.Taking Advantage of Voice Technology for EducationShe spoke at the first Alexa Conference (now known as Project Voice) in Chattanooga, TN in 2019.By sharing some of the blogposts she had written about using Alexa to explain her interest, Bradley Metrock, the event coordinator of the conference, not only invited her to take part in the conference, but also asked her to be a speaker.She asked Bradley if an educator could just sit in the back of the room and observe. She had beforehand dabbled with the idea of using voice in the classroom and even tried the concept out a few times, but held back due to privacy concerns.When the Echo Dot Kids Edition came out, she approached Bradley Metrock and told him she would like to pilot them in the classroom, and Bradley connected her to Dave Isbitski who helped her get a few of the Echo Dots to place in the classroom.They started using the Echo Dots for routines, reminders, and relevant Alexa skills.Blueprints were not available for the Echo Dot Kids Edition, so she begged Amazon to create them, and eventually Amazon came through.She believes in personalizing education and that formed the basis for their program where they make Alexa study guides for kids to study for tests. Teachers share those Alexa skills for studying with their families so that their families can use them to study at home.They also have an international program at their school through which Julie has been working with four international students who are English language learners. She is using Alexa to help them study for other exams, but what she has seen is that when the students answer Alexa, it helps them with their English pronunciation.She will be speaking at Project Voice 2020 and the students will be going with her to share their experiences.Teachers Using the Echo DevicesTeachers are not only using the devices in the classroom but also assigning students homework to go and use their devices at home.One of the advantages of having Alexa in a classroom is that it allows for small group instruction. A teacher can work with four or five kids over in one corner with one Echo device, and other small groups in other corners with their own Echo devices. They call that Station Rotation.Privacy Issues and Using Multimodal DevicesThey don’t have to only use the Echo Dot Kids' Edition.She freely uses other Echo devices because she doesn’t have to be FERPA and COPPA compliant at her school.She advises educators to be careful with how they set up their devices, how they use them, and how they store data.She has created a lot of infographics on her website that help educators set up their Alexa devices in a way that protects their students.For students under the age of 13, she only uses the kids' edition Echo Dot, because the device is COPPA compliant. She uses other Alexa devices in the other grades.She has not used Alexa devices with screens because of their price point, but what she loves about using smart speakers in the classroom is their price point. They can put a smart speaker into a classroom for $30 to $50 and every student has access. In a world where there is so much talk about equity of access, this could be a huge way for rural or poorly funded areas to make sure students have access to the world at large.Classroom Management via Smart SpeakersShe advises that a teacher should start off by telling the students what the expectations are. For example, students can’t just ask Alexa any question they want.A smart speaker helps keep the students engaged and listening to the responses that Alexa gives to the educational questions they collectively ask.Teachers’ ReactionsJulie asks teachers to pilot the smart speakers and that way teachers get to experience the benefits.When she first started out, some teachers were very skeptical about using them, and even now, some teachers don’t use them at all.List of resources mentioned in this episodeVocal IDThe Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula CourseHow to Turn FreeTime on Alexa On or OffJulie’s WebsiteJulie on TwitterJulie on InstagramOther useful resources:Voice in Canada: The Flash BriefingComplete List of Alexa CommandsAlexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in CanadaTeri Fisher on TwitterAlexa in Canada on TwitterAlexa in Canada Facebook PageAlexa in Canada Community Group on FacebookAlexa in Canada on InstagramPlease leave a review on iTunesShopping on Amazon.ca See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today is our 1 year anniversary of the Inside VOICE podcast! Listen to this episode to hear who the 9 winners are in the 1st Inside VOICE Podcast Awards, what categories they won in and why and how they were chosen. You can listen to each of the winner's full episodes at the links below. How to Transition into a Career in Voice with Blandine Avot hosted by Keri Roberts Blending Science and Art to Explore How Sound Affects Mood with Steve Keller hosted by Janice Mandel Samsung Bixby: What's New and How to Get Involved with Roger Kibbe hosted by Keri Roberts Marketing for Voice with Vixen Labs, Labworks.io and Pragmatic Digital hosted by James Poulter Putting the "YOU" in UX Design with Maaike Coppens hosted by Keri Roberts Saving a Company Money with Voice with Matt Smith hosted by Keri Roberts 2019 Voice Trends with Dave Isbitski, Amazon Alexa's Chief Evangelist hosted by Pete Erickson Improving Audio Clarity in Voice UX with Anna Pugh hosted by Keri Roberts Developing Voice Skills as a Student with Nimesh Solanki hosted by Keri Roberts

Today we're sharing with you the recent episode of Think Tank with Steve Adubato where he interviews Pete Erickson, CEO of Modev and the Founder of VOICE Summit, Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist of Alexa at Amazon and Martine Van Der Lee, the Director of Social Media for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Listen in to their discussion from this year's VOICE Summit on all things voice.

Guest: Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Amazon Alexa. We discussed Alexa Flash Briefing and the future of AI and how it will teach us about ourselves. The killer app is the connection. Part 2 of 2.Click here for Part 1We also answered a top question among marketers: how do you overcome discoverability challenges with early voice to get your Alexa skill found? Friendly reminder: please mute your Alexa device before listening.1-Click listen in your favorite podcast appSHOW NOTES:1:05 Flash Briefing - a consistent way to engage your customers. Beats a silly CEO email no one opens. This is a better company update.2:00"I want to engage and connect on a human level”Cross modalities to drive enagements2:45 Teri Fisher podcast: using SEO to share and promote all his Flash Briefings. Put all the briefings onto a blog. This is how to harness Flash Briefing across modalities and web as well as helping your SEO. 3:20 You offer customers value. You must give. Pippa is a good tool to get your briefings embedded into your site with a simple widget which is also search-friendly (thanks for sponsoring our show, Pippa!)4:00 What do you see coming down the pike as far as interaction within Flash Briefing? How do we move from passive to interactive, if we do at all - in voice experiences?4:30 Dave: I’m a product person. I love consumer devices. I feel strongly that you want someone to get a new idea or understand how something will work, it must be a physical product. That was Echo. People want devices that work with Alexa. That customer sentiment has evolved - the future will be similar. 7:50 Alexa Conversations8:00 The future of voice8:20 We as humans don't think in terms of TASKS but in terms of scenarios, ideas, and things we want to get done (REmars example)9:35 Burn ur current ideas down. AI will help. Existentialism. 11:00 There is no killer voice app. The killer thing is the relationship and context with AI. Like a long friendship - it’s not any one aspect that makes it meaningful, it’s the entire relationship. Listen anywhere: Subscribe free to this podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dave Isbitski - Podcast Guest - episode 48 previewHear the full episode on Beetle Moment Marketing Podcast: bit.ly/playbm See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sep 3, 2019 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Teri is welcomed on the Alexa Dev Chat Podcast by the host, Dave Isbitski, to talk about flash briefings and what else he is doing in the voice first space. Enjoy the Conversation!Teri is a family physician by profession and works at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Three quarters of his practice is sports medicine and the rest is general family practice. Before medical school he had done an education degree which formed the basis for his interest in education technology.Getting into Voice TechnologyHe had always been interested in technology from a young age.The first time Teri was exposed to voice technology was through Gary Vaynerchuk.Gary Vee was talking about voice technology and flash briefings, and Teri found them as an interesting way to get a message across to a population.He started searching online for information on voice technology, but couldn’t find anything on the technology’s presence in Canada, so he thought he should combine his passion for technology, healthcare, and education, and create a resource for people to learn about the technology.He had done podcasting in the past so it was easy for him to set up the Alexa in Canada blog and podcast. He started them before the announcement of Alexa coming to Canada was made.Alexa in CanadaTeri has a lot of content on the Alexa in Canada blog and podcast website.For those who are new Alexa users, he has a page on the site with hundreds of commands for the users to try out.He has other pages that highlight blog posts, the podcast, and some devices that are compatible with Alexa.He also has tutorials and the flash briefing page that highlights his flash briefings.He gets a lot of organic traffic on the website. When people type in the search terms "Alexa and Canada" his site is the number one that comes up after Amazon’s.He gets a lot of questions from Canadians about what they can do with Alexa.Flash Briefings 101Teri thinks they are an incredible opportunity for people to get out a message. They are going to become more popular in time.Just like how TV went to Netflix, and there is now personalized on-demand TV, with audio too, people can now get personalized on-demand audio. Amazon has positioned flash briefings to facilitate that.How to Start a Flash BriefingTeri suggests visiting CreateaFlashBriefing.com where he goes through the main steps in creating a flash briefing.He also offers his premium course in flash briefing creation for free at FlashBriefingFormula.com. He covers everything about creating a flash briefing, marketing it, and growing it.In terms of the costs of creating a flash briefing, the developer APIs are free. One gets AWS credits that can cover hosting.The preferred length for a flash briefing is two minutes.There could be potential in producing video content for flash briefings.Flash Briefings for Increased Customer Acquisition and EngagementTeri tested this out by carrying out an experiment.To do something special for his 500th flash briefing, to thank the guests that had been on his podcasts, and promote his flash briefing, he created a gamified flash briefing which included an Alexa skill called "Crack the Code"In his daily flash briefings, he would give some type of puzzle that the listeners had to solve. The listeners would then have to go to the Alexa in Canada website to search for answers to the puzzles.They would then go to the Alexa skill, enable it, open it, and then start talking with it to try and guess what the answer to the riddle was.If they got it correct, the skill would tell them a secret piece of the final code. Every day for two weeks, they would do the same thing.At the end of the two weeks, if a listener had all the 14 pieces, they could speak to the skill, say the answer to the final code, and would be told they’d cracked the code, and then get a text from the skill which would direct them to the Alexa in Canada website where they could enter to win prizes.There were extra entries for sharing the contest on social media.The growth and activations of the flash briefings from that were huge and the feedback Teri got was overwhelming. The number of times the flash briefing was played during those two weeks went up 20% and the number of activations went up 180%. The website traffic went up 100% and the number of times the flash briefing was played on the website went up 200%.His followers on Twitter went up 20% in those two weeks and the number of times that people were clicking on his links went up 430%. His stuff was retweeted 65% more than the prior two weeks.The contest also enabled him to increase his email list.The Network of Flash BriefingsTeri created Briefcast.FM to be the platform where all the best quality flash briefings will be found.List of resources mentioned in this episodeLearn How to Create Your Own Flash BriefingBriefcast.FMOther useful resources:Voice in Canada: The Flash BriefingComplete List of Alexa CommandsAlexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in CanadaTeri Fisher on TwitterAlexa in Canada on TwitterAlexa in Canada Facebook PageAlexa in Canada Community Group on FacebookAlexa in Canada on InstagramPlease leave a review on iTunesShopping on Amazon.ca See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dave Isbitski - Podcast Guest PreviewHear the full episode on Beetle Moment Marketing Podcast: bit.ly/playbm See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Amazon Alexa, on the power of Alexa for marketing, part 1 of 2.Dave and Emily talked about why voice is a departure from previous technology (leaving Tap, Type, & Swipe - entering Voice First) and how you can harness Alexa to learn more about your customers. Plus: how you can use voice as the ultimate frictionless up-sell. Full show notes and web player hereWe also answered a top question among marketers: how do you overcome discoverability challenges with early voice to get your Alexa skill found? Friendly reminder: please mute your Alexa device before listening.1-Click listen in your favorite podcast appSHOW NOTES:2:05: Dave has worked in web and mobile for decades: what is different about voice?3:40- “Voice cuts across all industries. From finance to CPG…” You’ll see people talking about voice in finance, then doctors and healthcare professionals about what does voice mean for patient care? And you’ll see others ask what does it mean for shopping and pay? Brand ask what it means for them and customer?3:32 “Every technology I’ve ever talked about has always had training, we had to teach customers how to do this first before they can tell us what they want.” - DaveDave Isbitksi, Chief Evangelist, Alexa - Amazon4:00 There is no learning curve with voice: it’s natural for everyone to speak5:54 Inclusivity:It’s not about how well you can code, it’s about how well you can converse (Dave mentioned this in his keynote at VOICE Summit 2019)7:10 The marketer’s bottleneck with IT - this is less a problem with voice (Emily)7:50 Ruder Finn / PR Week event where Dave made a point about organizational education about voice - how it’s not really new but is easier:8:30 “There must be a doc somewhere in your organization that can help you with voice” - a group is still responsible for teaching new tech (like with cloud) but getting people up to speed now is much easier9:40 Alexa can learn easily - these are just restful web services passing JSON across SSL request - which we are already doing on mobile. It calls the same API. The magic is that Alexa is taking normal human language and figuring out which function to call, vs you hitting a button or tapping a screen to trigger that call.10:25 Alexa stands on the shoulders of all the tech waves that came before11:00 Let's have a discussion about your customer who engages not in a silo but on phones, tablets, social, and other on-ramps11:10 Alexa Skills Kit enables you to teach Alexa how to have a conversation about things. “Set up parameters of a conversation our customers have with us.”11:45 Alexa Voice Service is why you see Alexa in cars, radio services, Windows desktop, and other mobile devices12:30 Upsell- with voice, this is the moment where your customer essentially already has their money out (movie theatre popcorn and Coke analogy). They’re already logged in. Brands can use their own POS like Domino’s does, or Amazon Pay - so it’s just very simple and natural in the moment to get an additional sale13:00 The real difference with voice is being in the moment. We process sounds differently than other senses - it is in real time14:00 Carl Jung reference - the subconscious collects 11 million but we can only process about 40 things in our conscious despite thousands of inputs coming into our brains at all times16:00 Four years ago, Dave said "Get in early now to figure out what people are asking or saying"16:42 Discoverability: how can marketers get their Alexa skills found?17:00 When you first launched your brand's mobile app what did you do, just submit it to the App Store or Google Play? No! Let customers know it's there and why it's faster or better.17:20 Banking app example - when it went mobile customers would choose that bank for its ease of use17:50 MyFitnessPal Alexa skill - track calories by voice (Dave found out about it through another marketing message on the mobile app)18:40 Remember that customers are multimodal - silo launches don’t work19:00 If you already know the top three things your customers do on your mobile app (via analytics), those are your three functionalities to start with in voice20:00 Reviews - flywheel of customer feedback on Alexa skills for usability studiesListen anywhere: Subscribe free to this podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Does your company need an evangelist? The title is bandied about quite a lot but who is doing it right? We spoke with Dave Isbitski Chief Evangelist for Alexa and Echo at Amazon. Previously he was a tech evangelist at Microsoft. Topics we covered: Technology evangelism is about relationships. Evangelists help a company's bottom line. Evangelists' top three priorities Helping people inside the company Evangelizing small companies Dave's Challenge

David Isbitski joined the Alexa team in early 2015, shortly after the Amazon Echo launched and before Alexa Skills Kit or the skill store. When he started, it was all about developer office hours, slack groups, and meetups. Today, it is more often about conference keynotes and boardrooms. Bret Kinsella interviewed Dave at the Voice 19 Conference to get a sense about how things have changed over the past five years and what that means going forward for voice assistant adoption. Isbitski is currently chief evangelist for Alexa and before 2015 he held a similar role for the Amazon App Store. Prior to that, he spent 6 years as a technical evangelist at Microsoft and earlier in his career he was a technology manager at J&J and a Principal at BT. 

We hosted Dave Isbitski, the Chief Voice evangelist at Amazon eight months ago. During the discussion, we asked Dave if Amazon was planning to focus on vernacular in Asia - particularly India. He mentioned it is a tough engineering problem to solve, and Amazon's focus is to ensure they get the English speaking markets right.Voice is the new UI, and in a country like India where a Billion people need assistance to use their phone, vernacular voice assistants become indispensable. Over the years, the technology had challenges penetrating the India market, as a good NLP engine needs a lot of relevant data to be trained. To get the data, the rural population in India need to have internet access.In this episode, Sachin Jaiswal the CEO of Niki AI joins Arun Krishnakumar. Sachin and his team at Niki AI have seen the evolution of the rural smartphone user in India. Through a lot of on the ground market research, they have now developed a product, with proprietary technology that serves as a voice assistant for the India market. Niki delivers voice based transactions in four different languages to its customers in India.Sachin describes how onboarding of 330 Million people to the internet in less than 3 years has created a leap frog moment in India. Thanks to Reliance Jio, even farmers can use smart phones at the nook and corners of the country. Niki AI have cleverly timed their product for this market.No wonder Ratan Tata is an investor in Niki. Listen in for more insights from Niki's Sachin Jaiswal. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We hosted Dave Isbitski, the Chief Voice evangelist at Amazon eight months ago. During the discussion, we asked Dave if Amazon was planning to focus on vernacular in Asia - particularly India. He mentioned it is a tough engineering problem to solve, and Amazon's focus is to ensure they get the English speaking markets right.Voice is the new UI, and in a country like India where a Billion people need assistance to use their phone, vernacular voice assistants become indispensable. Over the years, the technology had challenges penetrating the India market, as a good NLP engine needs a lot of relevant data to be trained. To get the data, the rural population in India need to have internet access.In this episode, Sachin Jaiswal the CEO of Niki AI joins Arun Krishnakumar. Sachin and his team at Niki AI have seen the evolution of the rural smartphone user in India. Through a lot of on the ground market research, they have now developed a product, with proprietary technology that serves as a voice assistant for the India market. Niki delivers voice based transactions in four different languages to its customers in India.Sachin describes how onboarding of 330 Million people to the internet in less than 3 years has created a leap frog moment in India. Thanks to Reliance Jio, even farmers can use smart phones at the nook and corners of the country. Niki AI have cleverly timed their product for this market.No wonder Ratan Tata is an investor in Niki. Listen in for more insights from Niki's Sachin Jaiswal. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There have been so many rich insights offered by Voicebot Podcast guests that I wanted to figure out a simple way to unlock a few of those nuggets in case you missed the episodes. I also wanted to hear some discussion among dedicated and erudite listeners about what was said by past guests and what they thought mattered most. With 100 episodes to choose from, we narrowed it down by asking listeners to let me know their favorite episodes and why. Our panelists also weighed in and by my count, we discussed at least 23 episodes. Amy Stapleton of Tellables, Pete Haas from Conversation Curve, and Dave Kemp from Oaktree join me on the 100 episode retrospective. What a long, fruitful trip it's been. Hear comments about episodes that included Adam Cheyer, Ron Croen, Cathy Pearl, Dave Isbitski, Lisa Falkson, Karen Kaushansky, Vijay Balasubramanian, Brad Abrams, and many more. 

Sam Sethi talked with Dave Isbitski about v-commerce, Alexa auto, privacy, skills payments, new devices, localisation and much more.Dave's quote below pretty much sums up my thinking about voicefirst development for the next generation of the web."I feel like voice is the new HTML" - Dave Isbitski

As you may know by now from following my content, I'm very passionate about using Alexa and other voice assistants like Google Home, for business use. I'm also passionate about teaching all other businesses how they can become more efficient and effective, as well as reach their target audience better via Alexa, Google Home, other voice assistants and even podcasting. But why Alexa so much? How many people use Alexa? How many businesses use Alexa? What is the most used Voice Assistant? What are the trends? Well, we have to give props to Voicebot.ai for these great stats around Amazon Alexa. As of January 2019, Amazon Alexa makes up 62% of the Smart Speaker Market, with Google Home at 24%. Watch the video for more of the stats we see as relevant and why. Also, according to SEO Tribunal - More than 50% of searches will be voice searches by 2020. and...Business.com, VoiceCon by VaynerMedia and Dave Isbitski of Amazon Alexa for these great stats around Alexa For Business. During 2018, 22% of Americans had smart assistants in their home, up from less than 1% in 2017. That’s huge, people. This is the next way to get your audience’s attention. In 2019, there are more than 50 million smart speaker users in the world; increasing 15% each month. Not only that, but there are now more than 90,000 Alexa Skills, with businesses reporting a 43% lift businesses nine months after launching an Alexa-enabled product, and a 53% a percent boost on average almost immediately after incorporating an Alexa Skill into their current product. 54% percent of professionals surveyed say they’d use Alexa in the workplace to increase productivity. This podcast covers the top five ways businesses can use Alexa to increase productivity in the workplace, courtesy of Business.com. Nashville Voice Conference 2019 To learn more in person about how to use Voice Technology like Alexa Skills, Google Home Actions and Podcasting to improve your business, please visit NashvilleVoiceConference.com. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

In this special edition of the Data Driven Daily Tip Podcast, I talk through an important concept that all business owners and entrepreneurs need to fully understand - the Minimum Viable Product. The tendency when building a software application or even a website, is to try to include everything all at once. To prioritize everything, which basically means you're prioritizing nothing. How do you build something that is basic enough for your initial beta user group to test, and what is the benefit of this vs. trying to build everything all at once. I explain in this podcast. Also, keep listening past the sponsored reads, and hear the special FULL version of my interview with Amazon Alexa's Chief Evangelist, Dave Isbitski. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

We're honoured to be joined by Amazon Alexa Chief Evangelist, Dave Isbitski, to discuss the conversations that he's having at C-Suite level about how brands should be approaching voice and where it's all heading.Become an expert conversation designerThe Conversational Academy is a fantastic online course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com.In this episodeDave Isbitski is the Chief Evangelist at Amazon Alexa and spends his days touring the world speaking and educating brands on why they should be adopting a voice strategy and how they can do it.We chat to Dave about what he's observing at Chief Exec level within brands across different industries and how he's advising brands to approach voice. We also look at the bigger picture, where voice is heading and what brands can do today to put themselves in prime position tomorrow.This is a key episode for digital and innovation leaders and C-Suite execs as you'll hear first hand from Amazon on how you should be thinking about and approaching voice in your company. From visioning and scene setting to resourcing, planning and scaling. You'll also hear about the opportunities that are waiting for you once you start down this path.It's also an important episode for anyone working at agency level, as you'll see some of the techniques Dave uses to sell voice to big companies and understand where the technology and user behaviour is heading.We dive into details on:Voice in the enterpriseShort and long term roadmap planningThe similarities between voice now and mobile thenHow to get users to discover your skillsConversation designRelationship buildingThe future of voice and how to plan for itLots of you sent your questions in for us to ask Dave, which we do at the end and Dave shares plenty of tips for designers, developers, agencies and creators in this space.Thanks to everyone who sent their questions in, it was a great way to end the show.LinksDave's details: thedavedev.comDave Isbitski on TwitterVote and propose Alexa features: alexa.uservoice.comDave's podcast: alexadevchat.comRecent podcast appearancesHear Dave discuss the evolution of Alexa on VoicebotAbout Dave, his role and Alexa in Canada on Alexa in CanadaDave on what's changed in voice on Voice Summit See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dave Isbitski became Amazon's first chief evangelist for Alexa in 2014. That's five years, but in smart speaker time, it's an eternity. Dave started out hosting office hours in Alexa Slack, going to Meetups and more recently is most commonly seen speaking at conferences around the world. We caught up at the Alexa Live online conference recording session in Seattle shortly after he finished up recording the keynote. Prior to his role on the Alexa team, Isbitski was the chief evangelist for the Amazon App Store. That was preceded by six years as a technical evangelist at Microsoft and time as a technical manager for Johnson & Johnson. We talk about building a developer community in the early days after the Alexa launch, how voice is changing consumer expectations and what brands should be thinking about in building their voice strategy. 

I asked Amazon Alexa Skills Marketing Employee #1 Dave Isbitski about Alexa Blueprints. What are they? Essentially they're a way to use a free, visual dashboard to create your own Alexa Skill. This is something all businesses should be aware of. What is an Alexa Blueprint? Dave says “one of the things I’m most excited about that has been happening in the last 18 months or so are Alexa Blueprints.” You can go to https://blueprints.amazon.com and create an Alexa Skill in minutes. Blueprints is a visual tool for creating a Skill. Now you can share them and publish them to the Alexa Skills Store for anyone to download and use. This can be a great tool for brands and businesses to connect with customers. So an Alexa Blueprint is a visual tool for creating an Alexa Skill. Brilliant. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

Dave Isbitski is Amazon Alexa's Chief Evangelist - so if he doesn't know what's going on with Alexa, who does? Dave is coming back to Newark this Summer for VOICE 19 as our keynote speaker and in this chat with Pete, he goes into some of the trends of what he sees coming this year to his keynote, as well as reflecting on some of the growth in the #VoiceFirst market compared to previous tech revolutions.

Dave Isbitski is the Chief Evangelist for Alexa at Amazon. Chances are you have a smart speaker in your home today. If you’re like me, you have an Amazon Echo with Alexa. I always tell people Alexa is one of those things that you didn’t know you need until you have it, and once you do, you’re not sure what you ever did without it. But what does the future hold for voice? And how can brands leverage this channel to build deeper connections with their customers? From beginners to voice experts this interview is jam-packed with thoughtful insights. Please enjoy my entertaining conversation with Dave Isbitski.

Dave Isbitski is the Chief Evangelist for Alexa at Amazon. Chances are you have a smart speaker in your home today. If you’re like me, you have an Amazon Echo with Alexa. I always tell people Alexa is one of those things that you didn’t know you need until you have it, and once you do, you’re not sure what you ever did without it. But what does the future hold for voice? And how can brands leverage this channel to build deeper connections with their customers? From beginners to voice experts this interview is jam-packed with thoughtful insights. Please enjoy my entertaining conversation with Dave Isbitski.

For almost three years I've been making Data Driven Daily Tips, useful pieces of information for Small Business Owners and Small Marketing Teams to learn Web Design and Development, Digital Marketing, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Blogging, Content Creation, Instagram Growth Strategies and more. There are almost 300 "DDD Tips" now, and they've taken many forms. Originally shot on Instagram Stories and saved down and uploaded to YouTube, and reposted in blog form on the website with written transcriptions, the "tip" has now evolved into a simulcast YouTube Video and Podcast with audio ripped down and published via Anchor.fm. The YouTube video now is post edited into IGTV format requirements to ensure omnipresence on all socials, including LinkedIn, Facebook and Medium.com This latest version of the "tip" is a first. It's our first with a guest. And this guest is an important one, so we took about 45 minutes together via Zoom Conference. Myself from my office in Valencia, Spain, and Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist for Alexa at Amazon and Alexa Marketing Employee #1, I assume from his office in Seattle. Here are the main highlights of our conversation: On helping brands figure out "what does this all mean?" - "Alexa is not a smart speaker revolution, it's about connecting with your customers." Talking about what it's like to help build a community of Alexa Developers via the Alexa Developers Console and the Alexa Skills Kit. Also, the Alexa Voice Service. - Alexa Voice Service is where you put Alexa into things. This can be done with Windows machines, Sonos speakers, Cars, Headphones, Homes, etc. So Alexa Voice Service basically extends the amount of Alexa-enabled devices that exist. Right now, I think of Echos and Echo Dots as Alexa-enabled devices. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

In this episode, Teri releases the results of the Future of Alexa in Canada survey to give us a clue as to where we are going with a lot of the features within the Alexa in Canada and Voice in Canada brands. And the Results are….!Teri was overwhelmed by the 95+ responses he got from the survey. The feedback will be very valuable when coming up with a way forward for the Alexa in Canada community. Survey Question 1: How comfortable are you with voice technology?13.8% are beginners (new users of voice technology). This demonstrates that the podcast and flash briefing should be putting out some of the basic information on how to get started with voice devices, and so on.47.9% are somewhat comfortable with voice devices.38.3% consider themselves advanced users of voice technology.The audience of the Alexa in Canada Podcast has different needs as far as where they are in their journey of using voice assistants.Teri continuously tries to provide value for people at different stages of their journey in using voice technology.In future, there will be some more content geared towards the different groups, but all the groups will have access to all the content.Survey Question 2: Which voice assistants do you use?97.7% of the respondents use Amazon Alexa. There were 3 people who said they don’t use Amazon Alexa.42.6% use Apple Siri while 31.9% use Google Assistant.There were less people who use Microsoft Cortana, Samsung Bizby, and other voice assistants.Survey Question 3: Where do you use your voice assistant? Do you use your voice assistant to control smart home devices?98% said they use their voice assistants at home.40% said they use voice assistants on their iOS phones, 27% on their Android phones, and 29.5% use it in their cars.62.1% said they use their voice assistants to control smart home devices.Survey Question 4: Which best describes your use of voice technology?88.4% of people said they use their voice assistants in their everyday lives while 31.6% said that they consider voice technology to be a hobby of theirs, meaning they are very interested in it.Survey Question 5: Which resources do you find most useful?56.2% of people said that they the website and the blog to be the most useful resource of the Alexa in Canada community.55.1% of people said they found the flash briefing to be one of the most useful resources.Survey Question 6: Which of the specific features do you find most useful?82.6% of people like learning about Alexa commands meaning they like being told what to say to their devices.56.5% of people said they like Alexa tutorials.48.9% of people said that they find skill reviews and hardware/smart home device recommendations useful.27% of people said that they like hearing about different sales and deals that Teri has been trying to highlight for the community.Survey Question 7: How did you first discover our community?39.8% of the respondents found the Alexa in Canada resource through Google searches which demonstrates that the content is ranking high on Google.18% of the people found the community through Facebook.17.2% of respondents found the Alexa in Canada community through the Voice in Canada Flash Briefing.Survey Question 8: What is your favorite part about Alexa in Canada?Some people said that its current and Canadian. That seemed to be an overarching theme.Some people wrote that the page is helpful and informative. They loved the information of new skills, instructions on how to use new skills, hardware reviews, the flash briefings, and the podcasts.Somebody said that they have actually listened to the podcasts from number one until now since discovering the podcast.The Facebook community does their best to help others.Someone wrote that they like the attitude and the style of the podcast, and the rest of the brand.Survey Question 9: Ways that it can be improvedThere has been a misconception that Alexa in Canada is the official Amazon Alexa in Canada website, which prompted some people to make suggestions or ask questions about issues that only Amazon can handle. One person said, “Stop treating us like lesser customers than the Americans”In AlexainCanada.ca/29, Dave Isbitski gave the official Amazon response explaining why it takes longer for Canadians to get some of the features compared to Americans.A lot of people said they like it the way it is.There was a suggestion to create a specific stream or area for voice developers with tips, sample codes, and so on.Somebody said they would like a discussion on the future of devices and abilities.Some people would like a “What’s New” portion where they can see when something new comes out in Canada. Somebody said they would like more industry people interviews.A couple of people said that they would like to see more skills in Canada, but skill developers (third-party developers) are the ones that have control on where their skills are released. This shows the need to have Canadian skills highlighted.Some people suggested having a French-Canadian portal, which is very interesting to Teri because that is a huge part of Canada.Somebody suggested more troubleshooting talks and how to figure out the discoverability of flash briefings aside from Briefcast.FM.Somebody said they would like to see more interviews with people using the voice technologies in more real life situations, more how-tos, product reviews for home automation, and recommendations.Questions on The Future Direction of Alexa in CanadaQuestion 1: How would you feel if I were to expand the content to include information about other voice assistants specifically in Canada, including Google, Siri, Cortana and Bixby.On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being No, definitely do not do it while 5 being Yes, Absolutely do it), the number one response was 5. 30% of the respondents said, “Yes expand it to include other voice assistants.”Almost 50% of the community said that they wanted to see it expanded.Some people, about 38% of the community, said that they didn’t want to see it expanded.Question 2: How would you feel if I added relevant sponsors to support the podcast and the flash briefing?Majority of the respondents supported the idea of having sponsors to support the podcast and flash briefing.25% of people said (5 out of 5), “Absolutely do it” while 24% said (4 out of 5), “Yes, definitely do it”Question 3: How would you feel about contributing a small weekly or monthly donation to support Alexa in Canada?Zero people said 5 out of 5 for “Yes, absolutely do it”.60% of people said, “Absolutely, do not do it” List of resources mentioned in this episode:The Future of Alexa in Canada SurveyComprehensive Flash Briefing Course See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“When you get to be my age (93), just to hear another person’s voice gets you through the day. I never thought I’d get to see this in my lifetime.”When it comes to the next big disruption, voice technology is undoubtedly one of the mosttalked about. And no one is more enthusiastic about this than Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Alexa at Amazon. Theodora Lau and Arun Krishnakumar speak to Dave about how voice is now starting to be the new user interface. According to Dave, voice will be transformative in how we conduct our day-to-day lives. Not only does voice technology allow us to meet people in the moment, it brings generations that were not exposed to technology together – the young and the aged. It provides children with access to information even before they can read or write, and older adults with a digital companion and connection to the outside world. Above all, it provides them a sense of empowerment that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.While voice is the new user interface – it is only one of multiple modalities through which wecommunicate. Just as there are different shades of grey, there will be different integration points where voice technology will play an increasingly important role along the various stages of our lives. Although we are far from being able to hold a true conversation with our virtual assistants, the progress we have made to-date has been remarkable. Studies have shown the benefit of smart speaker adoption to combat loneliness and isolation experienced by older adults. And the revolution for voice has just begun.Maybe that in itself is a lesson for us all. As I often said, innovation isn’t about makingincremental changes or shiny new gadgets. The true value of AI and other emergingtechnologies lie in their ability to create new customer value. It is about bringing positivechanges in the way we live and interact with each other.Listen in for all that and more with Dave Isbitski, our special guest for the week See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“When you get to be my age (93), just to hear another person’s voice gets you through the day. I never thought I’d get to see this in my lifetime.”When it comes to the next big disruption, voice technology is undoubtedly one of the mosttalked about. And no one is more enthusiastic about this than Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Alexa at Amazon. Theodora Lau and Arun Krishnakumar speak to Dave about how voice is now starting to be the new user interface. According to Dave, voice will be transformative in how we conduct our day-to-day lives. Not only does voice technology allow us to meet people in the moment, it brings generations that were not exposed to technology together – the young and the aged. It provides children with access to information even before they can read or write, and older adults with a digital companion and connection to the outside world. Above all, it provides them a sense of empowerment that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.While voice is the new user interface – it is only one of multiple modalities through which wecommunicate. Just as there are different shades of grey, there will be different integration points where voice technology will play an increasingly important role along the various stages of our lives. Although we are far from being able to hold a true conversation with our virtual assistants, the progress we have made to-date has been remarkable. Studies have shown the benefit of smart speaker adoption to combat loneliness and isolation experienced by older adults. And the revolution for voice has just begun.Maybe that in itself is a lesson for us all. As I often said, innovation isn’t about makingincremental changes or shiny new gadgets. The true value of AI and other emergingtechnologies lie in their ability to create new customer value. It is about bringing positivechanges in the way we live and interact with each other.Listen in for all that and more with Dave Isbitski, our special guest for the week See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The very first episode of BeyondTheTest! We interviewed Dave Isbitski chief technology evangelist for Alexa and Echo at Amazon. He talks about the future of technology and how it applies to high schoolers and others!

Voice search is getting a lot of buzz these days, but what types of companies is it right for and how should you use it as part of your marketing mix? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Yext CMO Jeff Rohrs breaks down the subject of voice-first search and explains what types of companies it is particularly well suited for. He also shares specific examples of how small and medium sized businesses can quickly and easily get set up to be found on voice search and translate that into more business. Listen to the podcast to hear Jeff's insights on the current - and future - potential of voice search and what your business should be doing right now to capitalize on it. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth, and I'm your host. Today my guest is Jeff Rohrs, the CMO of Yext. Jeff Rohrs (Guest): Thanks Kathleen. I'm excited to be here, thanks a lot. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you because, as people have been listening to this podcast for the last several episodes, they now know that in the last month or so I was able to launch a new voice skill for Alexa that allows people to listen to the podcast on their smart home device. I'm not yet on Google Home but maybe that will be next. So voice is top of mind for me and you are someone who has done a lot of thinking around what it means to market in a voice-first world and what businesses need to do to get ready for this, so I am excited to pick your brain today. Meet Jeff Rohrs Kathleen: Before we start on that, can you tell our audience a little bit more about yourself and your background and what you do at Yext? Jeff: Sure. I'm Chief Marketing Officer of Yext. I run the global marketing department and we've got folks in the States, over in London and Berlin and Paris and Tokyo and support all of our sales, product marketing, and customer success teams with what we do. I joined Yext a little over three years ago after having been with Salesforce by way of their acquisition of ExactTarget. I had joined ExactTarget in the middle of 2007 and got to ride that wave as they went public, helped build the content marketing, thought leadership teams, their connections events, did a lot of programming and a lot of creative work around that before the acquisition by Salesforce in the middle of 2013, which also happened to be when I was writing my book, "Audience," so they kept me around because I was the guy who was publishing a book just in time for DreamForce that year and it was quite an education and quite an opportunity to join Salesforce as they were expanding. At that point, I think ExactTarget was their biggest acquisition to date and I got to see Mark Benioff in action at a couple of executive off-sites and really see why that company is so successful, just because of his leadership and just the overall teams' contribution to their success and their customers' success. Kathleen: Wow. I feel like we could do a whole other podcast episode just on how the world of content and inbound marketing has evolved over the last 10 or so years, because you've really been in this arena for that time span, as have I, but in a completely different way, and boy has it changed a lot. Jeff: It sure has. I was fortunate to be doing content marketing before it was called content marketing and in a small world story, Joe Pulizzi, the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, and I led kind of parallel lives in Cleveland for a while. We both lived in Cleveland. I've since moved to the New Jersey area, but it took Ann Handley of Marketing Profs to email us, I think back in 2008 or 2009, and say, "You guys really should get together." I vividly remember sitting down with Joe at a now-defunct Caribou Coffee for our first meeting and we were peas in a pod believing what that medium could do and he obviously built Content Marketing Institute into a great resource and then Content Marketing World into a tremendous event, which I'm honored to come back and speak at in a couple of weeks here. Kathleen: Oh, great. Yeah, those are two really key figures in this world, too. Joe Pulizzi has been a real source of inspiration for me personally and for IMPACT as a company, and we just had Ann Handley keynote our conference a few weeks ago. Jeff: Awesome. Kathleen: I love her. Jeff: Good people. Kathleen: She's fantastic. Jeff: She is. Kathleen: She's a ball of energy. Jeff: Indeed. Voice-First Marketing Kathleen: Well I could go on and on about all those people, but I think what we're here to talk about and what I'm so interested to learn about is voice-first. It's amazing how quickly it seems we've come to rely on voice searches and it's been fascinating to me ... it feels like the Wild West ... to observe all the different ways that brands and companies are starting to try and experiment with it. I feel like it's a massively untapped opportunity and I would just love to get your take on it. Where do you see it going? What do you think the opportunity is for the average company out there that isn't Pizza Hut or Coca-Cola? How do you think the small and medium sized business market is going to use voice search in the future? Jeff: Voice search is a UI so it is a user interface, a way that a human being is going to interact with some sort of intelligent service. When you put it into that perspective, you can begin to understand how it impacts your world. If you are in a space where perhaps taking customer questions and a lot of repeatable questions and you're already looking at chatbots and things like that, voice is just gonna be a natural evolution and way that people will interface with that chatbot expertise that you might be building up. Or, as you indicated, it could be skills-based and then there would be an app. I have an app on my phone. What is a skill? It's an app on a voice assistant to do something, add value in some way. Jeff: Voice-first as a hashtag is very catchy and is spreading like a virus, but in a good way, because it's getting people to think about, "Okay. Let me look at my day and let me look at the value I offer to my customers, and how is voice going to play into that?" If you are a company that is developing software products, SaaS products, things like that, you need to look at the product itself and say, "How am I going to develop a ... ", or "How is voice gonna impact it, to create greater usability, less friction, less experiences, and an overall better customer experience?" If you're more on the services side, you might take a different look, and as you have, go down a skills-based path or come up with other ideas that are marketing ideas to get your ... the value of your services out in the marketplace. I think voice is as varied as any user interface. It's just that it has been in our consciousness because of sci-fi for a very long time. I would encourage people to let their minds wander creatively, just like the authors of science fiction did a long time ago about how this applies, because we're in the very early innings of the applications here. But when you hear ... and you should absolutely follow Dave Isbitski of Amazon. He tweets a lot of great stuff and one of them ... he tweets some pretty inspirational things because people send them his way, but like the father with the child who's having spelling difficulties, and he's able to use the skill that is his kid's spelling list, and the child interacts with the voice assistant like a teacher and it gains confidence from that because it's less intimidating to interact with a speaker than with a human being. There are a lot of things like that that I think we'll see come to fruition and it's gonna take your creativity to figure out how it best applies to your business. Kathleen: Yeah. It's really interesting. One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is, being a content marketer and being so focused on creating great content that's going to rank, what's interesting to me about voice search is it fundamentally changes the game because most content marketers historically have been focused on getting into the top of the search engine results pages. Jeff: Right. Kathleen: That objective assumes that there are going to be multiple results and you want to be in the top or at the top or near the top but when we talk about voice search, we're often talking about screenless search, and all of a sudden when you talk about screenless search, you're talking about one result. So it's almost like a zero sum game, you're either in the results or you're not. It's not only getting there, it's how your information is formatted to lend itself well to those kind of results. I guess it's kind of similar with where Google is going with featured snippets and all of that, but that's something that I've been thinking about so much. Like, how does the fundamental structure and format of our content need to change to lend itself well to being the one result, and not only to getting into that position but to delivering some value when somebody gets it? Jeff: Well, it's a great question and it's actually the very thing I'm sort of addressing at Content Marketing World in a couple of weeks. It requires you to shift your paradigm, because as you have rightfully noted, if you are in a voice-first world without a second screen or without a screen connected, you're getting an answer. You're not getting a multitude of results. I think we also need to acknowledge that as effective as SEO is and as much of a believer as I am in it, when you have a multitude of competition that's relevant, you're beholden to whatever the intelligent service is to dictate who's gonna be shown first. The constant chase to try and reverse engineer the black box that decides that can be a fool's errand. It can be mind-numbing. So when I say paradigm shift, what I believe you need to think about is your smallest content first. What are the facts about your business that you are the primary source of truth for? This is what Yext's entire business is built upon. It's a philosophy that consumers deserve perfect information everywhere and that businesses should be in control of the objective facts that appear on those services everywhere, because they have the greatest motivation to ensure that they are true. So if it is subjective, if it is reviews, well then you certainly want to be listening, responding, and then generating first party reviews from customers you know came through, but you're not gonna control what they say. However, if it is name, address, phone numbers, store hours, does this doctor have these certifications, does this marketer have these certifications, do you take this type of insurance? If you're an insurance agent, what insurance do you represent? If you're in food service, what is your menu? What's your special of the month? What are your prices? All of these are objective facts and because we've grown up with the Internet around a notion of search engine indexing, therefore based on search engine spidering, we have a paradigm that the world should work, that I should put my content out on a website that I own, and this spider should come along and grab that, pull it back and apply algorithms to it, it's intelligence, to then output a result in whatever the UI is the consumer is asking. I would challenge the audience to think about that and say, "Well, if the Internet started today and Google had the market cap it had, do you think it would begin by indexing?" My guess is it would not. My guess is it would begin by going to businesses, opening up APIs, just like it has, just like what we've integrated into our knowledge network and say, "Hey businesses, we want you to provide this information directly because we know you're the best source. The only reason we relied on third party data or indexing in the past is that was the only thing that was available to us." This is something we've seen as we have evolved is as those services open up the APIs and begin to recognize, "Gosh, when businesses are controlling that information through Yext, it's really, really reliable." It seems so self-evident, but it takes that recognition for the paradigm shift. Voice demands that paradigm shift, because you're not gonna be the answer on a lot of unbranded searches. You are going to be one of many and so what are you gonna be the answer for? Well, if somebody's asking for your hours of operation or if you're taking new clients or things that you should be objectively in control of, you better be in control of those. That's why we believe that we're shifting to a world of digital knowledge management, where you're controlling the facts in a centralized way and then outputting them to all of the endpoints where the consumer can engage with them. That is, I think, the fundamental underpinning of voice search as we see it today, and the effort to kind of reverse engineer how your white paper or your ebook is gonna be number one on an esoteric kind of question, I think is chasing your tail until and if such time, that there is greater clarity about how that portion of the brain behind the index is creating. Not to totally prolong the answer, but I'm gonna give you one more thought. As of right now, none of the voice assistants accept advertising. At the point at which they try and begin to do advertising, then there are gonna be people, just as in paid search, that buy their way to the top. Now whether the user will accept that remains to be seen. I remember when paid search ads came out, everybody said, "Oh, nobody's gonna click on these," and Google laughed their way all the way to the bank. So early stages, it's a new medium, but what I can tell you is that fundamentally your facts should be things you control, and if you focus your effort there, flip the paradigm, you're gonna be in the places when consumers are asking about you specifically. Kathleen: Yeah, I really love the approach that you took there, because I was actually talking with somebody about this yesterday. I'm involved in an accelerator program where I teach marketing to start ups and the person who was organizing it and I were talking about the marketing curriculum, and we were talking about how companies can get so wrapped up in certain tactics or channels, like pay-per-click marketing for example. They'll be like, "That's what I need to do. It's just gonna deliver my leads to me." The problem with that is that not only are there diminishing returns to scale at certain points, but you're not in control of that channel. If you put all of your eggs in a basket that you don't control, inevitably the rules of the game will change and the basket will fall apart, will crumble. I believe that it is important to make sure that everything that is within your control you have really got buttoned up and done well, and then if you've done that, sure, there's times you experiment with trying to optimize with other things, trying to use these platforms in new ways, and seeing what happens, but if you don't have the foundation built strongly, the house is gonna crumble. Jeff: Absolutely. In fact, that's kind of the premise of my book from a couple years back, "Audience, Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans, and Followers." It's the idea that you should be building direct, proprietary audiences across a number of different platforms so that you are able to reduce or better optimize your paid media, because what is paid media? You are just buying eyeballs, you're renting them actually, you're not even buying them. So the price will fluctuate and your ability to reach a market becomes very, very compromised. One only needs to look at what has happened to Blue Apron's stock over ... as they went public and just got hammered because their cost of acquisition and retention is higher because they're so dependent on paid media. But if you focus on, "Okay, how do I build a Facebook audience, Twitter following, email?" If you analogize that as you were then to voice, your facts about your business are the things that are ... They're not immutable, because your store hours can change, you can move locations. There's a lot of things like that that can happen. But you are the best source of truth for them. Now, we have to take this sense of ownership, and to your listeners who perhaps are sole proprietors or only have a couple of business locations, this might not seem like a big deal. But the law of big numbers is as you increase locations, it gets exponentially more difficult to manage this at scale accurately. We will often have customers come in and dump 10 different sources of "truth" on the table about their various facts about the business. We've had retailers come to us and give us databases that they say are the current database of stores and 20-25% of the locations are closed, never existed or moved. The factual management of the things that consumers are engaging with is fundamental just as I still believe that proprietary audience development is fundamental to long-term success. Kathleen: Oh, absolutely. I think your audience is one of those things that you can own if you do it correctly. If you're building your audience on a platform that you control, whether that's collecting emails or starting a private Slack group or what have you. Your audience is not necessarily the people that follow you on social media. We've all seen what happens. Five, ten years ago you had a Facebook page. It was all about "I want to get likes for my page, so people will see my updates," and now, Facebook pages are like a ghost town, so nobody sees anything. Building it where you have that control is essential. You started talking about smaller businesses, and there's obviously this sliding scale of businesses that start small. They start to grow, they get more locations, but for some of these smaller businesses, when they hear voice search, it seems just like, "I don't even want to think about that. That's not something I can tackle or that's within the realm of possibility for me because I'm just a local restaurant." Or, "I'm just a local law firm." Or just a dentist office. Can you talk a little bit about what should a small business like that be trying to accomplish with voice? What is realistic given their time, their budget, and their level of expertise? How Small Businesses Can Take Advantage of Voice Search Jeff: I don't want to get commercial, but I want to tell you one of the reasons that I'm here at Yext that ties to that. I was contacted by a head hunter coming back from a speaking gig in Frankfurt that was frankly really depressing because I'd been given the bait and switch. Supposed to be a keynote, ended up being a breakout. I'm speaking english. The one against me is speaking german. Kathleen: Oh boy. Jeff: Spent time away from the family and not a lot of return. I get this call from a head hunter, talking about this exciting company in New York. He's building it up, building it up, and he does the big reveal that it's Yext. At the very moment I was pulling out a tin of mints from my bag, as I was cleaning my bag from the trip that said, "Yext, keep your geo data fresh," which was their motto at the time, and I had just happened and didn't even connect it that I had been given that at an SMX show that I had spoken at. I'm like, "That's funny. That must be a sign." Well then the next sign was when I pinged my friend, Jay Baer, and I said, "Hey, Jay. Do you have some time to talk?" He said, "Sure." I said, "Well, I've been approached about this opportunity with this company called Yext." He goes, "God, that's weird." I'm like, "Why?" He said, "Because I'm writing the portion of the chapter of my new book at the time, Hug Your Haters, in which this lawyer in San Diego discovered that there was this zero star rating on Yelp for his law firm, and he discovered it because he was a customer of Yext. It alerted him. He reached out to the individual, discovered it was a misunderstanding, was able to turn that hater into a fan and reverse it to a five star rating." Kathleen: Wow. Jeff: And it was such serendipity. He's a single attorney, but he was using a platform for review listing management or response. We obviously want folks to work with us, look at us, whatever. But whatever you do, and we hope you do think about working with us, but pick something that you're going to use to manage that base location information because you want to be found on search accurately. Let's set that aside. That's the fundamental of voice search -- discovery of your business in branded or informational ways. Jeff: Let's keep in mind "near me" search because near me search is up exponentially in part because Google now just assumes you have a near me search if you're on a mobile device. Kathleen: Yeah. Jeff: If you're not accurate and found on Google, and the other thing I've been waiting for, I've mentioned this in a couple places, a few years ago or a number of years ago now because I'm getting older as the gray in my goatee attests. I remember when the big thing that hit everybody's PowerPoints for a while was "Do You Know What the Second Biggest Search Engine is?" The answer was YouTube, and everybody's like, "Wow. That's amazing." I have this sneaking suspicion now because people are putting in searches into the map. They're using that as not just point A to point B, but navigation. If you look at all the rich information that Google and others are putting in their maps, it's transformed it. So get that right. That's the voice search piece. Then you've gotta make sure the rest of your website has got appropriate schema that'll work markups so that the information can be found, assessed, that is less factual or subjective or expertise or what have you. Then I think you have to do as you did. Really look at who your customers are, and this is true for any marketing. This isn't just a voice conversation. Who are your customers and where do they live? If they are interacting with voice assistance, in greater numbers in certain circumstance, I would focus on those circumstances to see if you can add value in that environment. If not, just doing a voice application or something, a skill to do it and say you did, might have a slight PR bump. It might have a first mover kind of bump, but it won't have the long, contributory value to your bottom line that you would like. Then look at other ways that you can get into "voice." Right? I don't have a podcast, but today I'm a guest on your podcast. This is voice in a way, right? I look at news and PR and other ways that you can be getting into that voice assist in interesting ways, but don't feel obligated that you have to have some sort of profound strategy out of the gate. I think especially as a small business you're worried about keeping the lights on and people's paychecks coming. Continue to focus on where your customers are and how you optimize for them, and what you're going to see is technologies that kind of help you future proof. One of the things that we do is we try to expand our knowledge network. Our customers didn't have to lift a finger when three weeks ago we announced we're integrated with Amazon Alexa. They're now in Amazon Alexa. They didn't have to do a thing. You need to be looking at the technologies that allow for distribution or access of voice audiences as just part of the way they evolve and help you. For SMBs, I think, right now, I don't want to say wait and see. I think it's more read and listen and participate in your own life, but listen to your customers first. They'll help you see where they can be value added. Kathleen: Yeah. So if I'm hearing you correctly, and tell me if I have this wrong, it sounds like what you're saying is if you are a small or medium sized business and if your market is somehow geographically specific or if you have multiple geographically specific markets, multiple locations, et cetera, that it is not only possible, but it is incredibly accessible to make sure that you're doing at least the basic things you need to do to enable the customers that are looking for you and trying to get information about you in your local market to find that via voice. Jeff: Yeah, we've got a great customer, Romeo's Pizza, in my old haunt of Cleveland and Medina, Ohio. Their CEO, Ryan Rose, is one of the smartest minds in any kind of business that I've run into. They're growing. They're, I think, at about, I don't know, 55 locations now with a pretty big growth plan. They came onboard earlier this year, or maybe it was last year, at a smaller base. What they see, once they got their digital knowledge management right and they began to not just get listings and local pages and reviews correct, they began to understand that they could operationalize this because the reviews were telling them where franchises were falling short of their customer experience. They could address that before it became a fire. The listings and the pages and the increased local discovery helped them see who was benefiting, where did they perhaps need to take a look at expansion, what kind of contributions from the franchises community should they be looking for? Because they were essentially ensuring accuracy at that local level like never before. What sort of excited me about joining Yext is there was a shoe for every foot. It didn't matter the size of your business. We also have great partners that we integrate with like DexYP and Hibu and others who integrate us into their solutions for super small business, single locations, et cetera. That's, I think, important in those situations where you're truly one or two location kind of business, and you don't want multiple logins and everything else. You want a solution. We always are looking for partners that we can work with, we can integrate with, or we also have reseller and preferred partner programs so that we can reach customers where they have preexisting relationships, let's say with agencies or digital marketers. For small businesses, like I said, you're worried about keeping the lights on. There's no CMO. There's usually an owner and owner's sibling, spouse or son or daughter. It's a family affair, and you're wearing 20 different hats. Kathleen: You're the chief cook and bottle washer, right? Jeff: You got it. You need some things that are going to work for you in that way, and that's certainly how we try to approach the business. Kathleen: Yeah, that's actually how I first came across Yext when I had my digital marketing agency. Especially in our earlier years, we worked a lot with smaller, more local clients, and it was exactly that point. They were like, "I know I need to be on all these platforms. I need to be on Yelp and Google Maps and yellowpages.com and what have you." Managing that was such a nightmare. For us, it was a great solution.  Jeff: Mm-hmm (affirmative). How Yext Is Using the Move To Voice-First to Grow Kathleen: You are producing a lot of thought leadership content around digital knowledge management, voice search. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you're tackling that and what that's doing for you as a company? Jeff: The way that we're tackling it is we're expanding internationally. We're expanding vertically. We have really defined the values that we provide. I look at our content marketing strategy as how does it align with that, and then also how does it align with our product roadmap. We just came out with Yext for Events, so the very thing we did with listings back in the day and creating this then called power listings network. It's now called our knowledge network because there's a lot of non-search partners in that, but when we created that it was that update once, publish everywhere mentality. Well events has the exact same problem. If I want to promote an event, how the heck do I promote an event? Ben and Jerry's has free ice cream cone day. They've had it since their founding, but it was taking them hundreds of hours to promote that. They were in our beta, and that hundreds of hours went down to two. They could apply that time savings elsewhere. So applying it back to your content plan, now our team is focused on, "Okay, how do we tell this story? What content do we need to produce?" We're not going whole hog with like a white paper or ebook because we're learning the space, we're talking to the practitioners, we're seeing how it works, so that then we can create really relevant content that helps our customers and prospects better understand and utilize that particular product. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, let's look at the five values. We believe that our platform offers brand control, local discoverability (which positively impacts the bottom line), customer experience (making sure it's consistent on your website, your app and all the third party systems), organizational efficiency (like in that Ben and Jerry's story), and then future proofing the business. When we produce content, I want my team to look at that, and say, "Okay, what content are we producing for which values?" Sometimes it can be two or three or four. But we just came out with something called To Rebrand or Refresh, That is the Question. One of my favorite conversations that I've moderated, spoken about, read about over the years is that conversation about when should you rebrand. Because I will tell you what, I don't know. I look at Taco Bell and Doritos, and they're constantly refreshing their brands every few years, and I know the cost that takes in terms of signage and packaging and everything else. That is a bold bag. Then you've got some companies that completely rebrand. We wanted to dig into that, but why? Because we discovered through seeing how our customers used us that they were using us a lot when they would rebrand because it wasn't just about physical rebranding, it was about making sure the digital universe was correct. Aha! Okay, so now I get it. You've got customers that rebrand like a Best Buy or a Crabtree & Evelyn or any of these types of customers. We're a part of that story, and I think that's important to recognize. We're not the whole story. Great content marketing on behalf of B2B businesses isn't just writing a sales pitch. It is telling a very relevant and hopefully evergreen story with context where you add value in that final chapter. That's kind of the punch line so that if anybody picked that up who was in marketing, it would be of value to them. So that's kind of the approach that we've taken. Then some things, like I co-authored an ebook called "The Everywhere Brand" with Jay Baer that was truly inspired, like literally that one is a funny story where we found a little bit of extra money in a quarter. I've worked with Jay many times before. We called him up on the phone. I said, "Jay, hey, I want to co-author something with you. We're just trying to figure out what it would be." Because at the time we were really trying to establish a better sense of who we are, the messaging, et cetera. As we were brainstorming, I said, "What if we wrote something called "The Everywhere Brand"?" Then from there Jay and I just riffed and it came together very, very quickly. The notion that your brand now needs to be correct everywhere, and there are these seven tenants of a great everywhere brand. Inspiration can sometimes strike, but often times it's that good planning and understanding who you are, what your customers value from you, and how your products fit into that, and then regionalizing, localizing it as appropriate. Kathleen: Yeah, something you just said really resonated with me because, I think I was just telling you, I've published my 52nd podcast recently- Jeff: That's awesome, congrats. Kathleen: Thank you. I've been seeing certain themes emerge over the course of the last year because I'm always trying to surface what are the things that really make certain content or inbound marketers effective. One of the most prominent themes that has come out of a large number of the interviews I've done has to do with being audience centric rather than product centric. So many marketers like to create content that does revolve around specifically what their product does, or how it works. Some of the most incredible stories I've heard where marketers have gotten the best results have occurred when those marketers have created content that has nothing to do with what they're selling, but everything to do with the pain point their audience is feeling. And really it's about just opening the conversation. And the conversation doesn't have to be around what you're selling, it's just establishing a line of communication with the audience. I think it was my third or fourth episode, I interviewed Stephanie Casstevens, who actually now works with me. She was not one of my coworkers at the time, she was at a different company, and she was working at a company that was marketing medical waste disposal, which, you know, it's not super sexy stuff. Jeff: Glamorous. Kathleen: Yeah. And they were really kind of thumping their heads up against the wall in their efforts to get traction, and it wasn't until they realized, "Well, we're selling this to doctor's offices, and the gatekeeper in the office is the office manager, and they already have this solution, to taking about medical waste disposal isn't going to get us anywhere." They actually found out that the biggest pain points that person had was no-shows, patient no-shows. That has nothing to do with medical waste. Jeff: Yeah. Kathleen: And they created all this content around how to reduce patient no-shows, and all of a sudden, their marketing took off, and then they could, later on down the line, talk about medical waste, but they had to establish that bond and that line of communication first. So that was all a very long way of saying- Jeff: I completely agree. Kathleen: What you talk about really hits home. Jeff: I completely agree. When you can strike upon that, it's magic. And isn't it funny that the content part of our conversation tied back to finding out what is your customer's pain, listening to your customers. Same thing with how should you approach voice, and how should you approach audience building, and how should you ... You can't go wrong by coming back and understanding where your customers live, and I think we fail to because we're so caught up in a checklist of, "Oh, we've got to launch this. I've got to do this, I've got to do this." And we get very me-centric about ourselves, the brand, the product, and magic can happen when you put yourself in the shoes of that customer. Kathleen: Yeah, I've always heard people say, and I think it's so true, that we as marketers are our own worst enemies because we know all this as customers, but as soon as we put our marketer hat on, we immediately forget all of it, right? Jeff: Yeah. Kathleen: And we do the opposite of what we should do. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: So I feel like we could talk all day about voice search. There's so much interesting stuff here, and I'm fascinated to see where Yext is going. I'm definitely going to watch that more closely now, especially given some of the recent releases you had with Amazon Alexa integration, et cetera. Before we wrap up, though, two questions that I always ask everyone that I interview, I'm really curious to hear what you have to say. The first, and this one I'm really interested in because you have been in this world of content marketing for quite some time and you've seen a lot and you've worked for a lot of the companies that have been in the middle of all this. Company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Jeff: So as I thought about my answer to this question, I realized that I am no longer the consumer of a lot of inbound marketing, even though I'm the CMO. Let me explain, and this is I think important for those of your audience who are trying to reach a CMO. We are of a scale that I have a great marketing core team of lieutenants who own marketing operations and demand, who own brand and marketing strategy, who own revenue marketing, including field, owned and sponsored events, creative, international, et cetera. So my inbox is inundated with all sorts of efforts to attract my attention, dangling on the end of the fishing pole, a piece of content that I could download. The best you can hope for from me, and I could be an anomaly, is I will just forward that along to one of my lieutenants and say, "For your consideration." I know they are busy, and I do not expect anything back from them, but if it piques their interest and they dig into it, they know to come back and say, "Hey, there could be an interesting solution here." So perhaps rather than answer who is the best at inbound, how do you perhaps penetrate the wall? And inevitably, the things that get through are the things that are able to succinctly and quickly convey value. So provocative research that's on point with what we're doing, people who are able to lead with the lead as opposed to burying the lead about ROI, around certain solutions. And also ... whatever ... who aren't guilt tripping you that you haven't responded to them, or you haven't done x, y, or z, and they've sent you ten emails. If you tell me you've sent me ten emails, I know I've ignored you nine times. Kathleen: Yeah. Jeff: I'm not going to respond to the tenth. So I know this ... I'm explaining an outbound marketing aspect, but those same resources are the same ones that are going on the inbound sites, this is just the outbound activity of that. I'm just not in a search and find part of my career because it's up to those lieutenants to say, "Oh, we've got this pain point. We need to go find a solution." They're going to be the ones that are looking for that inbound solution, unless it is something so big and so pressing that I'm going to enter into that conversation. Kathleen: What was the last company that was able to penetrate the wall for you? Jeff: Oh, how exciting. Let me go into the forwarded mail. Actually, I know right off hand, I don't know the company name, but I know there is a company that manages field events that had sent us something. I know that PFL, which is a printing and resource company, sent a really nice mail piece to me with several pieces of content in it as well as a mug and some caramels, and it was very funny because the BDR who had sent it emailed me and said, "Oh, I hope you got my gif," et cetera. "I'd love to schedule a follow-up call." I didn't respond to him because I didn't know what he was talking about, I hadn't gotten it yet. His email had beaten the package. So then, all of a sudden, literally five minutes later the package arrives, I'm like, "Oh, oh, this is really interesting." I had a good conversation with him at an event recently. I didn't respond, but I forwarded it along to the person who runs campaigns for us and gave him the package and the caramels and the coffee mug, I will note. I didn't hold onto it. Kathleen: Oh, you're so nice, you didn't eat the caramels. Jeff: I didn't eat the caramels. But that is how it can work, and it was because ... they didn't know that was a particularly good time to hit us. We were the ones who decided it was, and now there's an ongoing conversation because we're talking with multiple players, and assessing pricing and value and everything else. In an inbox, if I were to just let my inbox run today, I bet you I would get probably a hundred unsolicited emails. That's just untenable to respond to. Kathleen: Yeah. Jeff: So going back to your question, inbound marketing remains strong because it's my lieutenants who are going to go out and search, and that's where you want to be found for the types of solutions and speaking to the pain points that they're looking for. Kathleen: Yeah. Makes sense. So you've got to not only know your ultimate target audience, but you've got to know who the influencers are as well. Sometimes, they're the ones that you have to get first. Second question. The world of digital marketing is changing so quickly. Voice search is a great example of that. How do you personally stay educated and up to date on all these changes? Jeff: So my entire marketing career grew up around the internet. I've shared this on other podcasts, but I do not have a business class to my name. I've never taken a marketing class. I was a Mass Communication undergrad BS, an appropriate abbreviation for the degree, I guess. And I got a Master's as well, a law degree. I practiced law for a couple years before I wove my way back towards technology in the mid '90s as the internet was exploding. So one of the things I did is I just started going down what I call the rabbit hole, was following the links to stories that were of interest, and I discovered very early on that they were linking to sources that I liked, so then I'd subscribe to that source, and then I'd subscribe to that source, then unsubscribe to things as they became less and less valuable. What I can tell you today, is that one of the ones that I still subscribe to that I know were very early on, is SmartBrief. So for your audience, if they aren't aware, SmartBrief is a company that actually manages and produces I think over 200 newsletters for different industry associations or topical areas, and I love their synopsis. It is actually the model upon which, arguably, The Skimm and Inside are based. They have been summarizing the news around particular topics. So they have a leadership SmartBrief, they have a social media SmartBrief, they have a mobile SmartBrief, they have a franchise association SmartBrief. That is such a great summation because just skimming the headlines and skipping through can be a powerful way, especially on the train or commuting or what have you, to quickly digest. I also remain a big fan and loyal subscriber to eMarketer. So loyal, as I've told them in the past, that I remember their charts before they were black and red. And they rebranded them in ... that is one of the great untold branding stories, about how they branded the color of their charts. Kathleen: Yeah. Jeff: And now, you see red and black, you know it's eMarketer. Kathleen: So true. Jeff: And what I love there, it's always provocative to understand trends and how consumer behavior or other behaviors are working. So I really like that. I could go on and on with the subscriptions, but it really is about finding the ones you like and going down the rabbit hole to find others. Kathleen: I love those all. Those are all new ones, nobody has mentioned them before, so I'm going to definitely be checking them out. So much good stuff here. I learned a tremendous amount, and I'm sure that there are listeners who ... and also who are now realizing that they need to gain greater control over their own presence online. How to Reach Jeff Kathleen: So if someone listening has a question, wants to learn more, wants to check out Yext, what is the best way for them to find information about Yext online and also to find you online? Jeff: Sure. So Yext.com, Y-E-X-T.com has all the information about the company. You can sign up to get a demo if you are a small business. You can even go through the process and actually sign up and subscribe. We are on all the social channels, so you'll find us there. My personal Twitter is @JKRohrs, and if you ... you can DM me there with a question, always happy to ping you back and answer. But those are probably the two primary ways and the best ways to get ahold of me. Kathleen: Great. Thank you so much. Thanks for all the great information and the wonderful sources to check out for digital marketing knowledge. It's been fascinating to me. If you're listening and you liked what you heard, I would really appreciate it if you would give the podcast a review on iTunes or Stitcher, the platform of your choice, and if you're listening and you know somebody who is doing kick ass inbound marketing, like Jeff is, tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much, Jeff. Jeff: Thank you. 

Today we are talking to Dave Isbitski, the Chief Evangelist for Alexa at Amazon, and we discuss leading through influence rather than authority, using technology to make a meaningful impact and how to stay curious by being passionate about learning All of this, right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

In this episode, Teri welcomes Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist of Alexa and Echo at Amazon, and voice-technology and natural language understanding educator.Welcome Dave Isbitski!As a child who grew up with a healthy serving of 1980’s sci-fi films in his entertainment diet, Dave Isbitski naturally believed that technology was the way forward. This started him off on a winding path that led to where he is today. In the 1990’s, he offered consulting services to corporate companies. He then worked as a technical evangelist for Microsoft, in the Pharmaceutical sector. In 2008, he was asked to start a community to teach people new software. He was the liaison between engineers and developers and the marketing team. His goal was to demystify and explain software to the average “lay person.” In 2013, Amazon entered the picture. Amazon showed Dave the Kindle Fire tablets and asked him to work his magic like he had done for Microsoft. He built a community around Android apps, the Amazon TV and the Fire phone. Finally, in 2014, Amazon showed him the seed of the gadget that would become the Echo… and the rest is history.What does it mean to be a Chief Evangelist?The Chief Evangelist at Amazon (i.e. Dave Isbitski!) has two main roles. It’s part Chief Educator and part Chief Advocate. It’s about what needs to be created and what’s missing. There are three very separate components to the whole process:1. Support the product when it’s out in the world.2. Take the time to travel and teach and get feedback on the products.3. Bring all the feedback back to the developers for improvement. Then it’s rinse and repeat.Why do some features take time to come to Canada, even though it’s the same language as the US?The language is not actually the same in Canada and the US, at least as far as the language models go behind Alexa. It’s very easy to forget how sophisticated the computer science behind Alexa is. At the base of it all, there’s a language model. In it, several processes come into play. The first component in this model is the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). This includes dialects, pronunciation changes, etc. Behind ASR, there is a larger, more abstract process called Natural Language Understanding (NLU). A third component is that in order to teach Alexa to respond to simple utterances like “how many calories will I lose if I run for an hour?”, developers create intents. There are many intents that can lead to the same response. Based on the previous example, one could also ask ” How many calories will I lose if I run for sixty minutes?” Here you have two different intents that lead to the same answer. Keep in mind that in this example, this is still in the same language, in the same dialect and in the same region. When you factor in different dialects, new locations and new cultures (i.e new countries), it takes time to develop accurate language models for each country. The last thing Amazon wants is to have it appear that Alexa is a tourist in a country outside of the US. The language model must be right before Alexa can have each of the features in the different countries.What does “Alexa Everywhere” mean?What Amazon really means is “conversation everywhere.” Alexa is becoming so natural, and that is what Amazon is most proud of. It’s not really about having her everywhere; it’s about being able to have a conversation everywhere. This will naturally lead to people having more than one Echo device. In fact, the Amazon team has actually come up with a technology called Echo Spatial Perception. Based on the sound waves your voice produces, Alexa will be able to figure out which device got the best reception of your command (i.e. the closest device) and switch to that device.What is Amazon’s approach to privacy with this device?From the start, people have been concerned about privacy. Amazon’s approach is to let people decide how they want to use the technology. They have given people many options to protect their own privacy. When you mute the Echo, it’s muted at the silicon level, so there’s no possibility of hacking the software to un-mute it. You can set pass-codes to make purchases, calls, etc. Also, Alexa is not recording all the time. Alexa only starts recording when it hears the wake word. Lastly, if none of these work for you, you can call Amazon and have them delete all the data Alexa has gathered through conversations with you.Where are Amazon and Alexa taking us?Dave’s personal opinion is that in the future when you are speaking to your grand-kids about how much time you used to spend in front of screens, they’ll laugh. They’ll laugh because how obtrusive our current technology is. The future is that conversation will bring back some of that humanity that we have lost. Talk is inclusive. It’s super early, but we are beginning to see the change.A big thanks again to Dave Isbitski for joining us on the podcast!List of resources mentioned in this episode:Dave’s PodcastDave’s LinkedInDave’s TwitterTeri Fisher on TwitterAlexa in Canada on TwitterAlexa in Canada Facebook PageAlexa in Canada Community Group on FacebookAlexa in Canada on InstagramPlease leave a review on iTunes See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

June 5, 2018 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Guest: Dave Isbitski @thedavedev Full show notes are at https://developeronfire.com/podcast/episode-333-dave-isbitski-human-voice

Episode 9 of The Alexa Podcast, presented by VoiceFirst.FM, features special guest Dave Isbitski (Chief Evangelist, Alexa and Echo, for Amazon). The discussion spanned what constitutes success for a technology evangelist, how he responds to questions about Amazon's data security and privacy, resources Amazon makes available for developers, and the next generation of Alexa skills which go beyond mere information recall. Dave Isbitski will speak as part of Digital Book World 2018 (www.DigitalBookWorld.com) this October in Nashville, and Amazon will sponsor The Alexa Conference, Presented By VoiceFirst.FM, taking place in January 2019 (www.voicefirst.fm/alexaconference). The Alexa Podcast is hosted by Bradley Metrock (CEO, Score Publishing) and Kevin Old (software developer, LifeWay).

According to a recent NPR/Edison Research study of smart speaker owners, 42% of people surveyed say it has become essential to their everyday lives, 47% say they use it more now than they did when they first got it, and 65% say they wouldn’t go back to life without them. And of all the folks who took this survey, 76% own the Amazon Echo. Although I didn’t take the survey, you can count me in all these numbers, as ever since I bought my first Amazon Echo almost three years ago I’ve been fascinated by how it can do so many things by only asking Alexa. So I was more than excited to speak with Dave Isbitski, Amazon’s Chief Evangelist for Chief Evangelist, Alexa and Echo, to hear more about how the device came about, how the Echo/Alexa combo is impacting customer behaviors and expectations, and where he’s seeing voice-first technologies taking us in the future.