Podcasts about Pullstring

Up and coming band alert!Check out my conversation with Alex Fuller from the rock band, Pullstring. We chat about their formation, influences and their brand new record, "Out with the Old." Oh yeah, lots of the Replacements talk in this one. Check out their band. They are fairly new and they rock like you remember rock to be.

To Support the Channel:Patreon  https://www.patreon.com/AskZacTip jar:  https://paypal.me/AskZacVenmo @AskZac  Or check out my store for merch  - www.askzac.comToday we talk about B-Benders. I cover some of the untold stories of the B-Bender, showing some of the missing pieces of the story, including that of the Dean Porter bender, and the Dave Evans Pullstring. I also spend some time showing some fun B-Bender licks.Spotify B-Bender playlisthttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/4XQ...Gear Used:1982 Kubicki Tele body with Danocaster soft V maple neckGlaser B-Bender circa 1996APC Adder (Neck) Ron Ellis 60T (Bridge)Strings: D'Addario 9.5-44 strings EXL120+Amp: 1965 Deluxe Reverb with Celestion V30 speakerCables: George L's.Effects: Mirage CompressorBoss TR-2 TremoloPower: Truetone CS6 #askzac #guitartech #telecasterSupport the show

Welcome to the recruiting hackers podcast. A show about innovation, technology and leaders in the recruitment industry brought to you by Talkpush the leading recruitment automation platform.Max: Hello, and welcome back to the recruitment hackers podcast. Today I have a very special guest on the show. I normally talk to people from the practitioner side. But today  I have the pleasure, the awkward pleasure of talking to what may be perceived by others as a peer or competitor as the chief of staff for Wade and Wendy.Wade and Wendy is one of  the early companies that got into the conversational AI for recruitment space and I first heard about this company, I think five years ago at the very beginning. Dave Mekelburg is the chief of staff and joining us today  for chats, which will be a little different and a little bit more about, I suppose, about chatbots. Right Dave? If that's okay with you. Welcome to the show!Dave: Great to be here. Always excited to talk about chatbots. I don't get to do it enough. Especially in this context. And I will say, you know, I cheat a little bit. So I'm our chief of staff and also our head of people. So I am technically a practitioner.I do oversee our recruiting and hiring. So I can speak a little bit to that. So I won't be a total foreigner, but I'm very excited to talk about chatbots and talk about, you know, what's happening in the recruitment mission: “hacking”. Max: Awesome. Were you the guy who came up with a job title conversational designer?Dave: Oh, that's a good question! Max: I picked that out from a blog post. By your CEO. And I saw that conversational designer and I fell in love with it so much that I immediately posted for that job, myself at Talkpush, you know, within a week. And I started collecting applications. We hire a bunch now, and it has taken off, and I always thought maybe you guys came up with the term.Dave: Oh, I would love to take credit for that. Let me think where we first probably encountered it. So there were some early, going way back in time, like PullString, which was like a Pixar backed, conversation design platform. We had met their team and they had somebody, they call it a conversation designer. I think Apple, in Siri, I think a lot of this Siri team was starting to use that phrase. But you know, certainly when we posted that job it got some ice, because people were like, conversation designer? I've never heard of that. Max: Yeah. We got the same thing. And I also... One of my heads of conversational design, she said that when she changed her job title from product manager to conversational designer, the volume of interest she got on LinkedIn also showed up. Considerably. So it's, it's not a good retention strategy, maybe a good hiring strategy. Conversational designer. Great place. A great way to advertise, but also not a great retention strategy because people will come out and try to hire them away from you.And so maybe if I'm lucky, I'll find out who came up with that term. And I'll be on a goose chase, Dave  I'll start looking at the people at Siri or at Apple to see if I can find the person who coined that. But yeah. Definitely chatbots have been around for longer than we've been around.Dave: That's definitely true, but they've, It's the rate of change... And I think you've probably seen us over the last few years. The rate of change has been astronomical and just in terms of the penetration, the familiarity from the average person that's interacting with the chatbot. When we first started, we were doing user testing and, you know, having people chat with the bot about work. Like talk to me about what it is you want to do and what it is you'd like to do.And it was such a novel experience for people. And now, you know, really up and down the... You know, across the country, in every corner. Everyone has some experience with a chabot, whether it's, you know, through a bank teller or through a customer service bot, you know, the depth of penetration has gotten beyond people that are interested in technology or people that are interacting with, you know, the hot new FinTech startup, things like that. And really gotten into the hands of the average person so that, you know, when we started, we built so much into the experience to make sure that this was intuitive and, it didn't scare people that, you know, might have some emotional, anxiety about talking to a bot about AI and automation in their lives. And get them to put, you know, trust in helping us get them the right opportunity and we're in between them and, you know, the right job.And that's the responsibility that we take really seriously. And we had to build an experience where people would trust and believe that we would guide them appropriately. Given that it's a technology experience. And I do think over the last few years, that comfort, that familiarity just looking at the feedback that we get and things like, that there's way less like, wow I've never  seen this before, too what a high quality conversational experience. We get feedback about the conversation design and that's just something that I think a few years ago, your average, you know, sales person and applying for an entry level job wasn't leaving feedback about our bots conversations design. Max:  I got completely thrown off. You're putting me back to 2018 or 2017, I was in India meeting with, I think it was Expedia, and I was presenting our technology chatbots for recruitment. And this gentleman, this engineer that I met started showering me with questions about natural language processing and how intensely have we mapped that out? And what is our taxonomy of not being tense? And I thought, where did I step into, I don't know, half the words he's using. But I haven't had that experience too often. Still most people  they're past the point of, I've never worked with a chatbot before. They still feel like it's a bit of a dirty word, and that it may ruin the candidate experience, but obviously if they're working with us they are past that as well. I guess it's a bit of a marketing job to change the perception and say, well it's not a chat bot, it's a conversational agent or, you know, it's a virtual agent, just different ways  of renaming it.  Our system is very much built on the handover to the human and having a hybrid experience, I think, and this is perception. I haven't really tested your product, but I think Wade and Wendy comes from a deep tech expertise where you have PhDs who work in your company. And so you're building intelligence that works without the human intervention, perhaps. Dave: Yeah. So, the notion of human intervention is a really interesting one. So let me lay out for you, a little bit of how we approach this problem. Right? And where we started from. We started from a place of recruiting that we saw. Our CEO and founder is pretty adventurous for deep tech and wearables for manufacturing and farming, you know, deep marketing tech in the early days of that industry. His first job out of college was as a recruiter, and he felt that pain of I love the problem. And everyone at our organization to a T, it's something that we screened for in our hiring process, is really excited about solving the hiring problem. Which is getting people the right opportunity as fast as humanly possible.And that experience kind of started it, you know, it is what bubbled this up. And there's so much wasted space when it comes to the recruiting process. So much time spent looking up email addresses and a dozen tools. And you know, spending all your time on LinkedIn, crafting the perfect email, you know, having the same 15 minute conversation over and over again, only to find out that the candidate, actually moved two years ago and they're not really, you know, they're not open to working in your location, all this kind of running in place.And you're never sure when you're a human recruiter connecting with a candidate, if this is the right fit. And as a candidate, you're not sure, like is it worth my time to even connect with this recruiter? And you have this kind of core problem in place, that we wanted to take that deep tech and automation approach to, which was, we want to clear out all of the road recruiting tasks that get in the way of humans coming together. So, when you say human intervention, our goal is to have as little human intervention in the bot, the chat experience itself. So, you know, in terms of what we do, our platform helps automate. And for an enterprise company it helps automate three core functions. Sourcing. So identifying a candidate for a role, engaging them in an informational interview. Getting them excited about the opportunity, a few basic qualifying questions, and if they're a fit, bringing them into the hiring process. Screening, so somebody applies to a job. They go through a first round, deep dive interview with our bot, all kinds of written texts.And the last is coordination. So scheduling, messaging, you know, don't forget your interview is tomorrow at 1:00 PM that kind of work. Our goal is to do all that. So recruiters can come in and see, okay, this candidate is excited, they check off all the boxes. Here's the AI recommendation that is leading to me to believe they're a fit. And I'm sure that this candidate is worth my time. Now let me as the recruiter, build a relationship, guide them to the hiring process and, you know, help get them across the finish line. We do believe that ultimately recruiting is still always going to boil down to a human decision making process. On the other side of the equation, we have a candidate facing a bot. So Wendy works at the enterprise and Wade, we put out into the world as kind of an AI career guide, and you chat with Wade about what you've done in the past, what you'd like to do there, and personality tests. So you can get a real sense of who you like to work with, how you like to work, why you work?Is it a matter of, I just want to grow my career in whatever way possible. I want to maximize my salary because I want to be able to take... Max: Wait, wait… Is this Wendy or Wade?Dave: This is Wade. Max: I would actually open up more to a Wendy than I would to  Wade but fine. Dave: So this is one of the things. And, I'm going to ask you a question, which I hope is not too uncouth because, you know, I'm on your show. One of the things that we saw from the beginning, which we were not ready for was. There's something about when you know you're chatting with an AI personality, and I know for you and for us,  that's key to the experience. Is letting people know, hey, this is not an immediate personality.There is a level of trust, people don't feel judged. And not everyone wants to open up to it necessarily, but we had in our early days, we had candidates sharing stories that recruiters, you know, that have been doing it for 20 years had never heard. People surviving, you know, terrorist attacks, people going into depth about a personal tragedy that they had overcome, and how it related to the job that they were applying for. And these really deeply personal stories. And when we would conduct, you know, surveys and user interviews afterwards, there's this theme of, you know, I wasn't sure about this, but once I started talking, I realized, you know what? I can just tell my story. And I can get it out of the way, and there's no judgment.And, you know, work is such a personal, specific context. Right? And I would love to hear from your side of the table, like what do you see when people are interacting with Talkpush? Like, how do they feel about it? Max: Well, first, to your points, I think it's a good medium for getting stuff out that would be sensitive. So, an exit interview would be a good medium to use chatbots because, you know, you're talking to an AI. And so you can say things as they are a little bit more, perhaps than if you're talking to HR. Because HR can pull back your salary, but the AI is not gonna hold back, hopefully.And on the matter of people opening up. We do, you know, very large volumes and most of it is you organizing, and sourcing, and screening, and coordinating. But really, we try to keep the sourcing bids, which is like asking questions directly to the job as lean as possible.And then screening is also quite lean and this is the bulk of the volume. And we collect answers that are text, but also audio and video. So a video is the chance for people to express their creativity and we see some nice things there, of course. And on text it's usually a little bit faster, because people are on their mobile phones and they're not going to go on forever.So yeah, that's how I would describe it, but there are  different pools of population because we work in eight or ten countries that have different reactions. So in some markets, the people are more warm and they try to convince the bots to, you know, treat them nice and put them at the top of the list. Then there's more flowery language. Dave: Yeah. I'll never forget. The first time we had, you know, Wendy the chat bot personality that is doing the interviewing basically, “she's the recruiter”. And, we had somebody go through an interview and at the end, you know, we have a little wave emoji and Wendy says, you know like, thank you so much the hiring, you know, the human hiring team will get back to you. Something like that, something from the early days, whatever it said. And people were responding, Thanks, Wendy. Hope you have a great day! And people know Wendy is a robot. We had like robot jokes in some of the early chats, like people knew. But you know, there's that notion of, well if I'm going to chat with it, I'm going to treat it like a, you know, like it's a thing, like I'm going to call it by its name. It's Wendy!Max: We got the same thing. I mean, it got to the point of like, Oh I really hope that you're going to get back to me sooner because I really need this job because blah, blah, blah my daughter needs a surgery something like this.Dave: Oh my goodness. Yeah...Max: At the end of the application process. Which, you know, I mean it makes my heart bleed, of course, but the bot doesn't have a heart! Dave: Sorry. There's nothing in our evaluation algorithm about, you know…Max: Additional circumstances. Dave: Yeah.Max: All right. Well, let's switch gears a little bit, and maybe it sounds like we should have a separate podcast where we put our bot people with your bot people and sharp out stories. That would be fun. It would be for a different kind of audience, my audience are mostly TA professionals, and  they could get a little bit bored. So, one thing that... We kind of started at the same time, right? So when did you launch a Wade and Wendy? Dave:  Wade and Wendy started in, you know, like on the couch, like a dollar and a dream idea in 2015. And we've been building ever since. Max: Yeah. So around the same time, I may be a few months older, but we only did our first text bot in 2016. After our initial run was doing IVR voice collection over the phone. Dave: Awesome. Max: And sometimes people ask me, are you still a startup? And I don't know what to tell them because, yeah, the company is more mature five years in, but people want to work in a startup because it's cool and exciting. How do we keep it cool and exciting by, you know five years in, when we have not yet totally taken over the world? Certainly our numbers are very high and, you know, we have purpose around that, but yeah, what are your thoughts on how to keep it fresh? And I'm also curious, you know, to extend a little bit the conversation, on the retention number, which is too high. Dave: Oh, interesting. Max: Because I think like the company from 5 years ago did not need the same people as it does now.Dave: Yep. So that's... What a question! I'll work backwards. I'll enter that first because I think that will help inform sort of, how do you keep it fresh? You know, I think. I completely agree with your point, which is that, you know, at every stage of a company you need different types of personality.The reality on the ground was really different. When we were tackling an incredibly difficult idea in an immature tech space and market, you know, in 2015, 2016, really up until probably like early 2019. It was when we would talk to prospective clients, we had to explain what a chatbot was, what AI was, why HR was going to benefit from AI and what that even meant. When it came to the problems that we were solving and  just the ability to manage a chat conversation and what that took. And understanding from a design and conversation perspective, through the hard tech of, you know, how do you build for the future with this? It was so much open field, just an empty meadow with grass in every direction. And we had to walk forward. Right? And that is not for everybody, that level of uncertainty of rapid rate of change, of you know, chaos to a degree because I'll never forget when we went live with the first customer, because you know I'd been on a zero to one startup journey before, so I had a distinct memory then of what happened and how disruptive and special having a client like was to, you know, an organization that was, you know, under the hood, trying to solve these deep tech problems.Certainly we had user testing all the time, but it's so different when you're actually live. So you know, the person that is engaged and excited, with that chaos, and certainly we do have a chunk of our core team that has been with us from those early days, you know, when you get to a level of, okay this is a thing, and there's still so much green grass and there's still so much to do, but there is a clear pathway and the people that we have now, you know, there are people that I think if they had joined the organization four or five years ago, it would have been miserable. You know, being the fifth person on a team, trying to solve this as a really different lived experience than, you know, being an employee 12 or 15 or 20 or whatever it is. And that changes as you go.Max: Some people would be addicted to startup after startup after startup. And you see those resumes where people spend 6 to 12 months and, you know, you're thinking, okay either this person has serious ADD and is not reliable or perhaps, that's just the way gear. They just have to go at the earliest stage and just keep doing that over and over again. Dave: I call it. I have this notion, that we talk about a lot, which is startup time. And the earlier you are at a startup, both in terms of company size and like development life cycle, if it's a tech startup. Those early days, every month, you should count as six months!So, you know, six months at an early stage startup, when it's five people, feels like three years of sort of life experience. And as the company grows, as things become more predictable, that starts to flatten out. We're like, okay, five years at, you know, a late stage tech company is five years. But if you're part of that first year, there's so much emotion and complexity and raw hours that go into those early days that it's almost as if you're operating on a different calendar.And certainly there are people, you know, that were on our journey for six months, you know, we have a couple of those, especially some junior folks that were interns and things like that. And you know, to this day we have relationships as if we've worked together for a decade, just because those six months really forged that time. And it was a really wonderful kind of moment for all of us. Max: So, your alumni, your best alumni, they stay in the startup world for the most part? They moved on to their own thing? Dave: It depends. And we've watched people go to a giant company and then realize like, you've been at it for long enough where a couple of people now in the second thing afterwards, worked for, you know, a fortune 50 company for a couple of years, and we're like, no I missed that! So most went on to start ups, in some capacity, but a handful went to the big places where everybody else is.Max: Yeah it paid the bill!Dave: Yeah, what motivates you is different for everybody. And if it's an awesome paycheck, which you can really get at a giant company, then, you know, by all means go after it. Max: I think so, right? I was saying conversational designers will find jobs and you can go work for Microsoft anytime, and probably get something there. Well, other tips, that I can appropriate, on how to keep the excitement strong? Especially in these troubled times where we cannot see each other in person? Dave: So this is the advice that I got.  Hopefully you can use it. Both you Max and you felt listener at home, or wherever you're listening to this. You know, when one of the things that... The entire employee life cycle is tied together. Right? So from the first time you hear about a company that you might work for in the recruiting process to, you know, 20 years down the line, when you're an AVP and just continuing to kind of move up the ranks, whatever it might be.But the best organizations that I've seen, really do illuminate their entire process with that organization's mission. Right? And, you know, I think about, you know, companies where I've gotten to see this up close are organizations like, you know... And I'm not... Some of these are clients, some of these are just companies where I've gotten the chance to talk to leaders and hear what they have to say. But I think about companies like PepsiCo or Comcast that have a real kind of message infused in what being an employee there means. And what the goals of that organization mean to kind of the broader world. Max:  wait a minute! PepsiCo, is the mission to sell more sugar? Dave: So it's, it's fascinating. PepsiCo has a wide range, and I have no affiliation with PepsiCo. So, I've just heard people at PepsiCo speak about their culture. So PepsiCo's internal mission is really oriented around diversity and personal development. So yes, they are selling corn chips and sugary drinks, and, a whole bunch of other things, which is, you know these are the complexities in the modern world, but internally in terms of their company's culture and what they do. They are deeply engaged with bringing their workforce into the community with service projects. They are one of the most diverse, leadership organizations. The fact that I even know this stuff just tells you see how, and again, I have no connection to PepsiCo whatsoever.The way they communicate that brand, the way it filters out throughout the organization keeps people, you know, not just engaged and motivated in a kind of transactional way, but in a deep way, people are committed to the development of the organization. Now selling sugary drinks isn't necessarily what drives me every day, you know, but for us, we're lucky and I'm sure you feel the same way. We're oriented towards this really powerful problem. Right? Every day I get to come to work and I get to work on. Chipping away at the massive unemployment crisis that is affecting, you know, hundreds of millions of people across the globe.I get to work on issues of representation and diversity by trying to remove bias in the hiring process. I mean, if your work, if you're a recruiter, if you're a TA person and you're thinking about your team. Your team is on the front lines of some of the most important decision making that human beings make. where do they choose to work. Where they choose to spend their time. Max: It affects society.Dave: It's such an important thing. And, you know we do a lot to remember that. And to talk about that, we have an internal mantra, that we call 60 to 6, which is, today the average job search in America, and it's different the world over, but the majority of our team is based in the US. So this is the number we use.The average job search takes 60 days. So when you're looking for work, whether you're unemployed or you've decided it's time for a change, the average job search takes 60 days. We want to create a world where it takes 6. We want to make hiring 10 times faster, where you're not spending all your time searching and trying to eliminate the right and wrong job. We want the right job to come to you, and you are able to just opt in. For the recruiter, they don't have to spend all this time searching for candidates and putting people to the process. You just get the right candidate, you know they're the right candidate because you have all this data to suggest that it's the right candidate, and how it maps on to their future work at your organization. This notion of 60 to 6 and removing, you know, 54 days of not knowing how you're going to pay your bills, not knowing what you're going to be doing with yourself, just going crazy, sitting by yourself, like that is so powerful and illuminating. And, you know, I think that really helps keep things fresh. And for a startup, this is a little more specific to startup context, you keep hitting milestones along the way, right? You're never done. It's never like, okay, this is over. It's like we got this contract, or we're able to release this functionality, or this thing that we've been talking about for five years, since this was an idea on the couch, is now about to go live because of the work of dozens of people across the globe.That is so cool. and when you get to celebrate those kinds of victories, you know, it's just a reminder of why you get up and do all the unglamorous things that being at a startup requires. Cause it's not, I'm probably making it sound all, you know, sunshine and lollipops, but you know, it's a lot. And there's a lot of work that a big team in money can solve that you have to be scrappy and you have to find your clever way around it. And just one at a time. Max: Yeah. I think we're lucky or maybe not lucky. We picked the industry we chose to go after. And that was one of the reasons I would personally not be motivated to sell sugary drinks. But, you know, I'm gonna use what you said about PepsiCo and go chase some sponsorship money from Mountain Dew for this podcast. Dave: Yeah. A really extreme podcast!Max: Yeah. Great. Well, we could go on all day on these topics, and maybe we'll talk again, and maybe we'll have our bot people have a separate chat, but it was a real pleasure, a real treat having you on the show. Dave, thank you so much for sharing and, all the best  to you and your 60 to 6 mission! I'll see if I can tweak it and personalize it for my team.Dave: I would love that. Look, this is a, you know, one of the things that we talk a lot about, is that this is a community, right? And, you know, if you're solving these problems, these problems are bigger than any group, any company, things like that. And it's always exciting to talk to other people who care about these issues.So thank you so much for having me. I am excited to get to talk with you about this in this setting. And yeah, hopefully people are ready to chat with a bot about work now.Max:  All right. Awesome. Thanks Dave. Dave: Thanks Max. Max: I had such a great time interviewing Dave Mekelburg Chief of staff.Head of people at a Wade and Wendy. It's often an experience running a startup, which is very competitive, where  you're trying to grab the headlines and grab market share from your competition. And it's so refreshing and so nice to meet the competition. And remember that you are working on problems that are much bigger than your own. And much bigger than your own company. And then we had so much to learn from each other. So thanks Dave for participating. I hope you enjoyed our conversation, and I hope it didn't get too geeky for you, that you'll sign up for more on the recruitment hackers podcast.

James Vlahos is the founder of Hereafter AI, a company that enables anyone to create a chatbot avatar of a real person. James' interest in chatbots started in the 1980s on a Commodore PET computer and was rekindled in 2015 when, as a reporter, he wrote a story about PullString's work on Hello Barbie. That led to him creating Dadbot, a chatbot that captured the memories and thoughts of his father that at the time was battling Stage IV cancer.  After completing a book on tech's many decades of voice assistant innovation called Talk to Me, James founded Hereafter AI in 2019. We discuss what he learned from his early experience with rudimentary chabot designs of the 1980s and how his experience building a chatbot to memorialize his father offered unique insights into the tradeoffs of these types of endeavors. We cover a series of questions James has not been asked before and he offers some interesting insights that will be of value to any voice assistant designer.  James earned a degree in journalism from the University of Oregon. Over his career, he has written for many publications including The New York Times, GQ, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic Adventure, and WIRED. 

In this episode, Teri welcomes James Vlahos, Founder and CEO at HereAfter, a company that uses conversational AI to help people save and interactively share life stories so that they never have to lose the voices of people they love.Welcome, James!HereAfter is an AI platform designed to allow people to have spoken "conversations" with loved ones who have passed away, based on voice recordings taken while they are still alive. The conversations are made possible by platforms like Amazon Alexa. James is also the creator of DADBOT, a veteran tech journalist for The New York Times, and author of “Talk to Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think” His book addresses the economic, cultural, and psychological impact of conversational AI and how it’s altering our traditional perception of human consciousness.His Tech JournalismHe wrote about diverse technology oriented topics, from the HyperLoop to businesses using smell to lure customers into making purchases.From 2015, he developed an interest in Siri and Alexa because he was fascinated by the fact that what we had been learning from science fiction about personified beings who could have conversations with us was actually becoming a reality.He wanted to write about the two voice assistants but ended up approaching it from a different angle, instead writing about how Hello Barbie was created by a company called PullString. PullString was acquired by Apple.For him, writing about that was a great way to get into how to create a dialogue system and teach a computer how to talk. It led him deeper into voice technology.Writing His BookWhen he did the Hello Barbie project, he could see that it was just the tip of the iceberg, and he could see that Amazon, Apple, and Google were battling each other in the voice technology race, and so he knew there was great potential in the space.He realized he couldn’t just fit everything about voice technology into an article so he decided to put it in a book.HereAfterHe was inspired to create it when his late father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and had a few months to live.James did a conventional oral history project with his father, recording him talking all about his life. He got hours of recordings and had them professionally transcribed.Around the same time, he was involved in conversational AI while researching for his book, and he realized that voice technology was a new way to share those recordings of his father in such a way that he could somehow hold on to him even after he had passed way.He created a conversational app that could be accessed on Facebook Messenger. One could create messages on the app and get audio/video clips from it. He called it the DADBOT.DADBOT has been the basis for everything he has worked on and created ever since.They are working on making HereAfter a scalable technology that anyone can use. They are on Amazon Alexa exclusively and expect to be on Google Assistant soon.They have received mixed feedback from the market. For example, most people want to wait before they record their memories, almost like how people always put off writing a will.Signing Up on HereAfterOne starts by signing up for the service, after which they are orally interviewed by someone in the company.The company then records the person’s life story in a very structured manner with the end product in mind.The audio is then edited and put into the HereAfter system so that when an end user asks a question about that person via Alexa, they hear that person’s voice answering them from the actual recording of that person.They are currently developing an app that will do the interviewing.HereAfter has positively impacted families and enabled them to capture the life stories of their loved ones for the benefit of their present and future family members.Remembrance Versus ReplicationScience fiction movies like HER show us a world where people can have relationships with AI beings on their phones and other devices, which brings up the question of whether we could possibly continue relationships with loved ones who have passed away through technologies like HereAfter.James reiterates that HereAfter is just an advanced tool for remembrance rather than for replication.List of resources mentioned in this episodeHereAfter WebsiteJames on LinkedinThe Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula CourseThe Voice DenVocalID.aiOther 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.

The first episode of the new year is both a reflection on how far we've come in the last 12 months, and what to look forward to in the year to come. This is a special episode as it's the first of a new decade. And in this episode of the rundown, we're getting deep. Biggest news stories of 2019:Apple acquires Pullstring - Was this an acqui-hire? Or is Apple using the Pullstring tool internally? Will we ever find out? Either way, 2019 started out with a big acquisition from a big player and showed good early signs of a growing industry.Sonos acquires Snips - Given the importance of privacy, Sonos might have struck gold with Snips, the privacy first voice tech company based in Paris. The sad thing for the industry is that Sonos will not support third party activity any longer and is keeping the tech for its own speakers.This could happen more and more as big companies realise the value of having voice technology and the talent to create and implement it. I just hope there are enough tools leftover to support the community and third party developers. Voice startup funding set to triple in 2019 Google BERT: understanding searches better than ever before, and ERNIE from Baidu, which can understand subjects and topics better than ever before, too. With these two developments on the AI front, the chances of understanding what users are asking for and being able to offer the correct response is increasing. ERNIE beats humans as far as its reading comprehension capability is concerned.Most overhyped news stories of 2019:Voice interoperability initiative - On the face of it, this sounds great. Lots of organisations joining together to create standards that will allow multiple voice assistants to run on a single device so that users can choose which assistant they'd prefer to use for a given task. In reality, given that Google and Apple aren't involved in this, will it have the benefits that it proposes? Well, perhaps if Alexa is your go-to assistant, then yes. This way, Alexa is the core assistant, but then Cortana and Einstein (Salesforce) can be used for more specific tasks. Humans review Alexa recordings - Maybe it's just because we're so deeply ingrained in the industry that I assumed that humans reviewing mismatched or failed utterances would be obvious. Seemingly, though, the public did not. I understand that users are concerned with privacy around voice assistants and that the industry needs to respond and develop trust. However, I think this story in particular, and the others that followed it, blew things out of proportion and were used as scaremongering.Most underhyped stories of 2019:Google AI runs on device - When this was announced at I/O'19, it got some coverage, but it wasn't made as big a deal of than I'd have thought. This is the kind of thing that Snips used as it's core differentiator. Now, Google can run automatic speech recognition on the device and takes Google Assistant a step closer to being a privacy-first assistant. The great Google action outage - In October, Google pulled almost all of the actions on Google Assistant offline without warning. Thousands of actions just vanished. It later transpired that it was due to a potential security risk around a phishing vulnerability, but the company didn't communicate anything to anyone, at all. The story was covered by Voicebot and that's about it. Imagine if all of the apps in the app store vanished over night, without warning. I thought it was big news that deserved more coverage. Hugging Face raised $15 million - The big two (Amazon and Google) are talked about more often than anything else. We're guilty of this ourselves sometimes. But we know that voice is about more than those two. It's about more than smart speakers. It's the interface of the future and the opportunities for using voice span well beyond the big two. And so when we see a company that is trying to build the definitive natural language processing library, that's big news. Other links we spoke about in the show:How voice assistants could change the way we shop - Kane Simms, Harvard Business ReviewTeam Say It Now finishes third in Alexa CupOren Jacob discusses conversation design on VUX World See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

LAUREN RUTH WARD is an uncompromising creative force. Along with co-writer/bandmate Eduardo Rivera, they are fearless in their writing and performances. We caught up with them as they are preparing for a tour in support of Melanie Martinez, October 15th – November 22nd. This will be immediately followed by their first headline European tour November 27th – December 15th. Keep an eye out for them when they are in your area. On this episode, Lauren Ruth Ward performs three songs live from the Joy Sounds studio – “Pullstring,” “Vahalla,” and “We Are Grown Ups.” Follow Lauren @laurenruthward

Dan's new book is out: https://www.amazon.com/Bayern-Agenda-Book-Galactic-Cold/dp/0857668196/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1551813978&sr=8-1-fkmrnull Corning is working on foldable glass just to show Dan: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/03/05/apple-supplier-corning-foldable-glass-display/ iFixit says Apple has quietly fixed the footlighting issue on some MacBook Pros: https://ifixit.org/blog/13979/apples-2018-macbook-pros-attempt-to-solve-flexgate-without-admitting-it-exists/ Dan would like to thank Dave Nanian for his help. He makes SuperDuper! https://shirt-pocket.com Apple acquires Lighthouse AI's patents: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/03/04/apple-lighthouse-ai-patent-purchase/ Apple has also acquired PullString: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/apple-buys-pullstring-toytalk/ The researcher who found the Keychain bug gave it to Apple despite the company not giving bounties for macOS bugs: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/03/04/researcher-gives-apple-details-of-macos-keychain-security-flaw-despite-no-mac-bug-bounty-program/ Google also shared a high severity macOS kernel bug: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/03/04/google-details-macos-kernel-flaw/ A former member of Apple's legal team was charged with insider trading: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/13/sec-charges-former-apple-exec-with-insider-trading/?utm_term=.bc7f7b1e9fca Steve Troughton-Smith's Marzipan tool: https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/marzipanify Our thanks to Oregon State University E-campus. Want to take the fast track to your career in technology? Earn your computer science degree online from Oregon State University E-campus and tap into unlimited career possibilities in any field. Learn more at ecampus.oregonstate.edu/rebound. And our thanks to Indochino (https://www.Indochino.com) where you'll find the best made to measure shirts and suits at a great price. Use the promo code "REBOUND" and get any premium suit for just $359. Our thanks also to Legacybox (http://legacybox.com/rebound) the world's largest, most trusted, digitizer of home movies and photos. There's never been a better time to digitally preserve your old home movies, film reels, and photos. Go to Legacybox.com/REBOUND to get 40% off your first order!

Recorded 17th February 2019 This week I am joined by our resident digital forensics specialist and the Slackroom security guru @dougee (Andy J) for a Cyber Security Special to talk about passwords, password managers, browsers, tracking, fingerprinting, AV/Malware protection and lots more. We even find time to fit in a few short news stories too! GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS Listeners of this show can claim $10 off purchases of Luminar and/or Aurora HD 2019 use the coupon code EssentialApple at checkout for your extra discount! Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter! We can now also be found on Spotify, Soundcloud and even YouTube. On this week's show: Andy J (aka @dougee) In the Slackroom SECURITY SPECIAL Americans and Cyber Security – Pew Internet Top 10 Security Practices – Cal Poly 2019 State of Malware report: Trojans and cryptominers dominate threat landscape – Malwarebytes Blog Malwarebytes The best Mac antivirus of 2019 Mac World PC Mag How to stay as private as possible on Apple's iPad and iPhone – Computerworld Fingerprinting So, how much information are you giving away right now? These two sites will show you: AmIUnique.org and Panopticlick.eff.org – I think you'll be surprised. Browser Audit Device Info Me Detect My Browser DNS Leak Detector Email Privacy Tester 99 Free Privacy Tools That Will Keep You Safe Online in 2019 – Cloudwards 7 security tips to stop apps from stealing your data - CNET Two Factor and U2F authentication Authentictor Apps inc Authy, Google, Microsoft, Last Pass YubiKey or Simon's is the Feitian ePass FIDO-NFC Security Key VPNs – so many out there, but be cautious that the one you use is reputable (and I am never sure comparison sites aren't taking a kickback to promote one or more services... call me cynical) Best VPN VPN Pro Advertising/Content Blockers/Anti Trackers Ghostery / Ghostery Lite / Ghostery Plus Privacy Badger Ad Block Plus Crystal Content Blocker (iOS) Password Managers - like anything based around securing your privacy be sure your chosen solution is verifiably reputable iOS KeyChain 1 Password LastPass Dashlane Password Boss Browsers Brave Cliqz Tor Vivaldi Safari Reverse Firewall / Network Blocking Little Snitch LuLu Hands Off Radio Silence APPLE New macOS Malware Variant of Shlayer (OSX) Discovered – Carbon Black Apple's latest update for iOS 12 makes it easier to manage subscriptions – BGR Apple being sued because two-factor authentication on an iPhone or Mac takes too much time – Apple Insider Apple to acquire voice app firm PullString in deal worth below $100M, report says - AppleInsider Apple reportedly acquires digital marketing firm DataTiger – Apple Insider TECHNOLOGY ‘Surveillance capitalism' has gone rogue. We must curb its excesses – Washington Post Not only was glass box spying on people apparently it was insecure as hell to boot... Computer World Google Is Forcing Some Nest Customers to Reset Their Potentially Compromised Passwords - Gizmodo 'Google, this is bogus as hell' — one of the fathers of the internet blasts Google for how Chromecast behaves on his home network – Business Insider Consumer groups call out retailers in a bid for better IoT security – Digital Trends US needs an internet data privacy law, GAO tells Congress – CNet JUST A SNIPPET For things that are not worth more than a flypast TCL is working on a foldable phone that bends into a smartwatch – CNet Nemo's Hardware Store (55:24) ATH-M50xBT Wireless Over-Ear Headphones – Amazon $200 US or £174 UK Essential Apple Recommended Services: Ghostery - protect yourself from trackers, scripts and ads while browsing. 33mail.com – Never give out your real email address online again. Sudo – Get up to 9 “avatars” with email addresses, phone numbers and more to mask your online identity. Free for the first year and priced from $0.99 US / £2.50 UK per month thereafter... ProtonMail – End to end encrypted, open source, based in Switzerland. Prices start from FREE... what more can you ask? ProtonVPN – a VPN to go with it perhaps? Prices also starting from nothing! Fake Name Generator – So much more than names! Create whole identities (for free) with all the information you could ever need. Wire – Free for personal use, open source and end to end encryted messenger and VoIP. Pinecast – a fabulous podcast hosting service with costs that start from nothing. Essential Apple is not affiliated with or paid to promote any of these services... We recommend services that we use ourselves and feel are either unique or outstanding in their field, or in some cases are just the best value for money in our opinion. Social Media and Slack You can follow us on: Twitter / Slack / EssentialApple.com / Spotify / Soundcloud / YouTube / Facebook / Pinecast Also a big SHOUT OUT to the members of the Slack room without whom we wouldn't have half the stories we actually do – we thank you all for your contributions and engagement. You can always help us out with a few pennies by using our Amazon Affiliate Link so we get a tiny kickback on anything you buy after using it. If you really like the show that much and would like to make a regular donation then please consider joining our Patreon or using the Pinecast Tips Jar (which accepts one off or regular donations) And a HUGE thank you to the patrons who already do. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Host Bradley Metrock (CEO, Score Publishing) discusses the top voice-first technology news stories of the week, with special guest Elizabeth Robins (Best Innovation Group). Stories include Google's secret microphone found in Nest devices, Apple acquires PullString, can smart speakers and voice assistants be hacked, and the launch of the VoiceFirst.Community industry trade association. This Week In Voice is part of the VoiceFirst.FM podcast network.

Épisode #867 avec Denis Talbot et Jordan Chénard. Au menu: Far Cry: New Dawn. Lunark. Chandails de la NBA. Apex Legends. Apple achète PullString. Open IA et écriture de texte. Ghost Recon Wildlands: Special Operation 4. Samsung: Arrêt des nouvelles versions de lecteurs Blu-Ray. DOOM. Google: Annonce d'un projet à la conférence des développeurs Google. Fortnite: Fusils Nerf. Activision Blizzard: coupe de postes. Lunettes Magic Leap. Samsung S10.

Épisode #867 avec Denis Talbot et Jordan Chénard. Au menu: Far Cry: New Dawn. Lunark. Chandails de la NBA. Apex Legends. Apple achète PullString. Open IA et écriture de texte. Ghost Recon Wildlands: Special Operation 4. Samsung: Arrêt des nouvelles versions de lecteurs Blu-Ray. DOOM. Google: Annonce d'un projet à la conférence des développeurs Google. Fortnite: Fusils Nerf. Activision Blizzard: coupe de postes. Lunettes Magic Leap. Samsung S10.

This week’s episode brought to you by Professor Buzzkill, Slice on Broadway, and Alex Kahrs Design & Media! Katie, Chilla, Krause and Sorg are back in studio to run down the tech news you should know about, including: Katie got a library card! Chilla is excited for the Sphero RVR Robot! Sorg is amazed by thispersondoesnotexist.com and the use of Nvidia chips to accomplish this artificial intelligence photo project. Krause has been playing Anthem! But it's still not Apex Legends. Rizz shared a story about a sociel experiment mod where someone made a "Sex Club in Sims and Everyone Got Pregnant" Sex Robots could be hacked to kill you Tetris 99 is a puzzle Fortnite on Nintendo Switch Lego is going AR with Lego Hidden Side Hot Wheels has new TechMod remote control cars Samsung drops blu rays Google goes double incognito Apple buys startup Pullstring After the show remember to: Eat at Slice on Broadway (@Pgh_Slice) if you are in the Pittsburgh area! It is Awesome! (sliceonbroadway.com) Want to be part of our studio audience? Hit us up at awesomecast@sorgatronmedia.com and we’ll save you a seat! Join our AwesomeCast Facebook Group to see what we’re sharing and to join the discussion! Follow these awesome people on Twitter: Ron (@KrazyKrause) Katie (@Kdudders), Sorg (@Sorgatron) and Chilla (@chilla) Have you seen our AwesomeTips videos? You can support the show at Patreon.com/awesomecast! Remember to check out our friends at the River’s Edge (@RiversEdgePGH) and The 405 Media (@The405Radio) who replay the show on their stream throughout the week! Also, check out sorgatronmedia.com and awesomecast.com for more entertainment; and view us livestreaming Tuesdays around 7:00 PM EST

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This week’s episode brought to you by Professor Buzzkill, Slice on Broadway, and Alex Kahrs Design & Media! Katie, Chilla, Krause and Sorg are back in studio to run down the tech news you should know about, including: Katie got a library card! Chilla is excited for the Sphero RVR Robot! Sorg is amazed by thispersondoesnotexist.com and the use of Nvidia chips to accomplish this artificial intelligence photo project. Krause has been playing Anthem! But it's still not Apex Legends. Rizz shared a story about a sociel experiment mod where someone made a "Sex Club in Sims and Everyone Got Pregnant" Sex Robots could be hacked to kill you Tetris 99 is a puzzle Fortnite on Nintendo Switch Lego is going AR with Lego Hidden Side Hot Wheels has new TechMod remote control cars Samsung drops blu rays Google goes double incognito Apple buys startup Pullstring After the show remember to: Eat at Slice on Broadway (@Pgh_Slice) if you are in the Pittsburgh area! It is Awesome! (sliceonbroadway.com) Want to be part of our studio audience? Hit us up at awesomecast@sorgatronmedia.com and we’ll save you a seat! Join our AwesomeCast Facebook Group to see what we’re sharing and to join the discussion! Follow these awesome people on Twitter: Ron (@KrazyKrause) Katie (@Kdudders), Sorg (@Sorgatron) and Chilla (@chilla) Have you seen our AwesomeTips videos? You can support the show at Patreon.com/awesomecast! Remember to check out our friends at the River’s Edge (@RiversEdgePGH) and The 405 Media (@The405Radio) who replay the show on their stream throughout the week! Also, check out sorgatronmedia.com and awesomecast.com for more entertainment; and view us livestreaming Tuesdays around 7:00 PM EST

March TV Event - https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/apple-video-service-summer-launch-1203140002/ Apple Buys PullString - https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/15/apple-reportedly-buys-pullstring-startup/ Apple Disengages - https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/12/apple-self-driving-car-disengagements-report/ Music For A Friend - https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/15/apple-music-gift-subscription-friend/ Cover art photo provided by @hollymindrup on Unsplash. More Apple Daily: appledailypodcast.com More Tech: techdailypodcast.com More Shane: shanelother.net --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/appledaily/support

Niko Vuori is founder and CEO of Drivetime.fm, a company focused on creating games that you can safely play while you drive. The company's first title is a voice interactive trivia game that mimics a morning radio show and substitutes gameplay for music. Niko was formerly co-founder and COO of Rocket Games which was acquired by Penn National Games in 2016. He was formerly head of product at Toy Talk (which eventually became Pullstring) and studio general manager at Zynga where he oversaw Zynga Poker and FrontierVille which together generated over $300 million in annual revenue. We discuss voice interactive games, why Drivetime.fm is betting it all on the car, and how you can get people to incorporate a 30-minute game into their daily routine. Niko earned an MBA from Berkeley's Haas School and an undergraduate degree from the University of York. 

Oren Jacob is CEO and founder of PullString and Greg Hedges is Vice President of Emerging Experiences at RAIN Agency. In this episode, we break down the latest adoption data of voice assistants on and beyond the smart speaker. User adoption of voice assistants is actually higher on smartphones and in cars, we explore how that impacts brands, media, and enterprises while also exploring how consumers use them today. You can download the report at https://voicebot.ai/research and follow along with the discussion or just sit back and listen to two industry experts share how organizations are reacting to the spread of voice on multiple device surfaces. 

A deep dive into the three pillars of conversation design: psychology, technology and creative writing, with Robocopy's Hans Van Dam.Where to listenApple podcastsSpotifyYouTubeCastBoxSpreakerTuneInBreakerStitcherPlayerFMiHeartRadioConversation designConversation design is more than simply putting some words on a page and hoping for the best. The assembly of words is only part of the job of a conversation designer.To design natural conversations that mimic what we're accustomed to having with our fellow homo sapiens, it takes an understanding of the three pillars: psychology, technology and writing.In this episodeThis week, we're joined by Hans Van Dam, founder of conversation design agency, Robocopy, and creator of top conversation design training program, conversationalacademy.com, to be taken through the details of what it takes to design great conversational experiences.Hans takes us through:Why understanding the technology is important. Human and computer brains are different. Appreciating what's different and the constraints you're operating in will help you work within your limits and get the most of of your conversation.Why psychology is key. We discuss things like anchoring, framing, social proof and plenty more psychological tools that can help you improve the user experience and success of your conversations.Why copywriting is all you have and how to make the most of it. We've covered how writing for the screen is different to writing for the ear in our conversation with Oren Jacob of Pullstring. We take that concept further in this episode and discuss some of the mistakes brands make when designing conversation, as well as who should be designing them.We also get into detail on things like the importance persona design, measuring success and a whole host more.LinksVisit the Robocopy websiteCheck out the Conversational AcademyFollow Hans on TwitterNudge by Case Sustein and Richard Thaler on AmazonKurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing Fiction See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

欢迎收听丽莎老师讲机器人，想要孩子参加机器人竞赛、创意编程、创客竞赛的辅导，找丽莎老师！欢迎添加微信号：153 5359 2068，或搜索微信公众号：我最爱机器人。丽莎老师讲机器人之现实版黑镜，用人工智能"复活"去世的父亲。在大热英剧《黑镜》中，女主角在痛失男友Ash后，利用Ash在Facebook、Twitter等社交网络上留下的大量数据，重建了一个模拟Ash人格的AI。“重生”的男友最初通过文字、语音与女主角聊天，最后甚至通过一具机器人身体“实实在在”地陪伴在女主角身边。很多人都觉得不可思议，但是最近剧中的情节确确实实地在现实生活中发生了。James 是一名自由记者，2016年他的父亲被诊断为癌症晚期，生命只剩下最后几个月。他难以接受自己的父亲即将去世这个事实，同时他了解到一家名为“Pullstring”的公司即将把人工智能聊天机器学习技术公开，这项技术可以允许人们跟这个世界不存在的人对话，比如那些去世的名人，而且完全能够模拟他们的语气与神态。James决定利用这项这项人工智能制造出一个能够完全模拟父亲的机器人，让父亲拥有一个“不朽之身”。父亲刚开始难以理解儿子的想法，但在儿子的真情下，他决定配合儿子完成让他“永生”的项目，于是James在陪伴父亲治疗的日子里，每天与父亲谈话一小时，并用录音笔录下了跟父亲所有的对话。最后，James利用人工智能技术完成了初代“手机里的父亲”，庞大的资料帮助他建立了一个知识渊博的、更加贴近真实的父亲，这个AI父亲对话呈现的温暖或是消沉、积极或是阴郁，都像是父亲性格的一部分。在初版的“父亲机器人”完成之时，James让AI和母亲对话，母亲被逗得大笑不止，因为他说话的语气和习惯真的很像父亲。James的爸爸也觉得这玩意儿很酷。但最终，父亲没等来一个更酷版本的对话机器人，在2017年2月就离世了。James怀着失去父亲的悲痛之情，改进了一个更加逼真的机器人。他不仅有父亲的声音，并且在谈话间还带着父亲的性格。他会亲切的给James讲过去曾经讲过的笑话，也会像老伙计一样与James打招呼。“我们能和智能机器人说话吗？”在父亲离世好几周后，James的7岁儿子突然问道。“哪一个机器人？”James还以为他想与Siri聊天。“当然是爷爷啦！”大数据重建“灵魂”不管是Ash，还是James的父亲，基本上是通过收集信息、获得模型、发现规律、统计比较，最终实现“预测”这一终极目的——预测在特定的情景下，“如果TA活着，会怎么做”？不过，收集的数据不可能包含所有的生活情景，AI中总会有数据空白，就像文章开头与Siri对话的一幕。这些数据的空白环节还需要机器自行学习来填补。如今，人工智能学习的知识有两类，一类是数据库；一类是使用过程中用户的实时反馈。而人工智能学习的最佳例子就是AlphaGo，它之所以能在打败李世石、柯洁，都依赖于海量的人类对弈数据。虽然情感上，我们都知道，AI并不明白你的意思，它只是把你语音数据和它的后台数据进行一次匹配，并给出对应的回答。但是，人类不也是期待未来能制造出真正有智能的机器人吗？更酷的AI应用方向“复活”至亲的愿望并不遥远，不过这项技术还有很酷的应用方向：比如机器人宠物，车辆自动驾驶系统，能陪练打分的英语AI老师，能问诊的AI医生……随着人工智能技术的成熟，它将会潜移默化地改变整个世界。16世纪的人们，敞开怀抱拥抱了大航海时代，20世纪的人们不满足于地面，奔向太空。而现在的我们，为未来的发展埋下种子。

In recent years we have seen amazing advances in the field of conversational AI.  Machine learning, and in particular deep learning, has been getting a lot of attention lately. But this is not always the best method when building conversational AI.  In this podcast Cognilytica analysts interview Martin Reddy, Co-Founder and CTO at PullString.  We discuss 3 fallacies related to conversational AI, why machine learning isn’t always the best approach to solving conversations problems, and how PullString Converse provides an easy to use conversation canvas allowing companies who might not have a technical team in-house to create voice apps. Read more ...

VentureBeat published a few weeks back an article by Martin Reddi from PullString about what’s next on conversational AI. I have had the article open on my tabs since then and I wanted to share it here and comment on it. And that day has arrived! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mike sits down with Michael Fitzpatrick, President and COO of Pullstring to discuss Voice Assistant technology and it's applications in education and in life. They walk through the history of interactive audio and related simulation and explore the balance between data privacy and convenience. HAL 9000 would be so proud!

This week, we speak to conversation design master, Oren Jacob, about what it takes to create successful conversations with technology.There are so many complexities in human conversation. When creating an Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action, most designers try to mimic human conversation. Google itself has taken steps in this direction with the fabricated ‘mm hmm’ moments with Google Duplex.But does all of this have an actual impact on the user experience? Does it make it better or worse? How natural is natural enough and does it matter?What other factors contribute to conversation design that works?PullString CEO and co-founder, Oren Jacob answers all in this week's episode.In this episode on conversation designWe get deep into conversation design this week and discuss things like:How natural should conversations with voice assistants be?Why you shouldn't just try to mimic human conversationThe power of voice and what tools designers need to create compelling personasWhether you should you use the built in text-to-speech (TTS) synthetic voice or record your own dialogueHow any why writing dialogue is entirely different from writing to be readThe similarities and differences between making a film and creating a conversational experience on a voice first deviceThe limitations and opportunities for improved audio capability and sound designThe importance of having an equal balance of creative and technical talent in teamsWhat it all means for brands and why you should start figuring that out nowOur guestOren Jacob, co-founder and CEO of Pullstring. Oren has worked in the space in between creativity and technology for two decades.After spending 20 years working at Pixar on some of the company's classic films such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo, Oren created ToyTalk.ToyTalk was a company that allowed kids to interact with their toys through voice.As voice technology progressed and voice assistants and smart speakers were shaping up to take the world by storm, ToyTalk morphed into PullString, the enterprise-grade conversation design platform.About PullstringFor over half a decade, PullString's platform, software, and tools have been used to build some of the biggest and best computer conversation in market, with use cases and verticals as diverse as hospitality to home improvement and Hello Barbie to Destiny 2. It was also used to create, the latest in big-ticket skills, HBO 's Westworld: The Maze.Where to listeniTunes/Apple podcastsSpotifyStitcherTuneIniHeartRadioPippaYouTubeAny other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on AlexaLinksVisit the PullString webisteFollow PullString on TwitterRead more about how the Westworld skill was createdCheck out the details of the talk Oren will be giving at the VOICE Summit 18Check out the details of Daniel Sinto's demo of PullString Conversehappening at the VOICE Summit 18Check out the VOICE Summit website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

An all-star duo (Lauren Golembiewski of Voxable; Michael Fitzpatrick of PullString) discuss the latest in voice technology news, including Adobe's acquisition of #VoiceFirst startup Sayspring, Apple's HomePod predicted to only sell two million units, Amazon's release of the Intent Request API, Google's advances in AI in advertising and publishing, and the BBC's piece on "I Tried To Make Alexa My Best Friend." This Week In Voice is hosted by Bradley Metrock (CEO, Score Publishing) and is part of the VoiceFirst.FM podcast network.

Voicebot, PullString and RAIN collaborated on the Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report 2018. Today's special episode breaks down the findings and extends the discussion to offer additional perspectives. PullString COO Michael Fitzpatrick and Greg Hedges, vice president of emerging experiences for RAIN Agency, join Voicebot's Ava Mutchler and host Bret Kinsella in this week's panel discussion. Topics include: total U.S. user base, appeal for young and elderly consumers, U.S. device market share, use cases, voice commerce, direct-to-consumer opportunities and much more.  

Oren Jacob saw Star Wars as a kid, and fell in love with the idea of bringing together technology and storytelling to create something entirely new.   Today, he’s the cofounder and CEO of PullString, a tech startup that teaches software how to have conversation. That could mean helping companies build an Alexa skill for Amazon’s Echo, or allowing Hello Barbie to talk. I caught up with Oren at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, where he spoke to leaders in the tech world about laying the groundwork for the future of voice interaction with computers.   He told me how his early fascination with Star Wars led him to an internship and first career at Pixar – before he decided to start his own thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oren Jacob is co-founder and CEO of Pullstring. Founded in 2011, Pullstring is maker of Converse, an enterprise SaaS platform for building, deploying and maintaining conversational apps. Oren discusses how his 20-year career making movies at Pixar influences his approach to voice app and multimodal design. He goes into how the company started, how things were different before Amazon Echo, how the kids in his neighborhood were his original focus group and what he learned from working on high profile projects for Mattel, Grand Tour and Sponge Bob. 

Regular listeners will remember that I recently interviewed Adobe’s Colin Morris about how voice-based interfaces have suddenly become a significant tool for marketers. But, it’s not just voice: marketers are gravitating both to voice and text-based computer conversation (e.g. chatbots) to engage with customers. PullString is the only company enabling conversations on Amazon Echo, Alexa Google Home, as well as text-based computer conversations on Microsoft’s Skype and Facebook’s Messenger. As these platforms surge in popularity with consumers, PullString is seeing a similar surge in demand from companies that want to build branded chatbot experiences on these platforms. Today's guest is Oren Jacob, and he is the CEO and co founder of Pullstring but also has a very rich history, Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull had personally chosen Oren to lead Pixar’s internal tech team as CTO, where he worked on Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, and Finding Nemo.  

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Oren Jacob, former CTO of film studio Pixar and founder of computer conversation startup Pullstring to talk about the new age of voice technology and talking Barbie (2:30), how the Amazon Echo ended the family shopping trip (7:30), his years at Pixar (12:00), building Mrs Potatohead (13:30), how a stuffed bunny inspired his startup (14:45), cold-calling speech experts (18:30), doing market research in a tent (20:30), raising the first round of venture capital (23:30), the difficulty of doing speech recognition for children (25:30), the many tech revolutions making voice systems possible (28:45), turning algorthms into characters (36:00), whether bots kill jobs (40:00), expecting too much from machines (46:00), and the importance of a voice assistant elegantly saying “I don’t know” (47:45). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The O'Reilly Design Podcast: The VUI tools ecosystems, and voice gender and accent selections.In this week’s Design Podcast, I sit down with Cathy Pearl, director of user experience at Sensely and author of Designing Voice User Interfaces. We talk about defining conversations, the growing tools ecosystems, and how voice has lessened our screen obsession.Here are a few highlights from our conversation: What constitutes a conversation? To me, I do have a definition of ‘conversational.’ I was talking about this at O’Reilly Bot Day last week. For example: my Amazon Echo. I don’t view the Amazon Echo generally as conversational because most of the things I do are one-offs. I’ll say, ‘What time is it?’ or ‘Turn on the lights’ or ‘Set a timer,’ and she’ll give me one response, and we’re done. If I go up to you and say, ‘How are you doing today?’ and you say, ‘Fine,’ and then we turn and walk away, I don’t really see that as having a conversation. That would not be a very good conversation. One of my definitions for ‘conversational’ is that it has to have more than one turn. A lot of times, with a lot of these voice assistants—let’s say, you can do multiple turns but they don’t remember what you said before. Each turn is like a brand-new conversation, which would be really annoying if you were talking to somebody and every time you said something, they didn’t remember anything you told them before. In relation to that, they really need to understand pronouns. This is something that humans or toddlers can understand. I can tell a toddler to, ‘Go get the red ball out of the green box,’ and it knows it. The kid knows that I want the red ball. Computers have a really hard time with that. It’s starting to improve. Google, especially, I think, is working hard on this task. I've heard that with Google Home, they’re going to be better about that kind of thing, but those are some of the things I think systems need to be conversational, and that could be either through voice or through text. Designing for how people talk not how you want them to talk My biggest principle and advice is to design for how people actually talk and not how you want them to talk. I think as designers and developers, we get very focused on whatever we’re building, and we think it’s very obvious: ‘Yes, the user will know what they can say here.’ It’s really not true. Especially if you're designing something like a virtual assistant, like Siri. She says, ‘How can I help you?’ That really sets up the user for failure in a lot of cases because you really can’t just say anything. There’s a limited number of things you can say. We need to spend a lot of time thinking about how will we communicate with the user, what they can actually say. There’s different ways to do that. One thing that’s really important is when you're first designing your system, spend a lot of time writing what we call sample dialogues, which are essentially back-and-forth conversations, like a film script between the voice user interface and the user. You write these down. Then, you read them out loud with somebody. You learn very quickly—if I wrote the system and I am reading my voice user interface prompts, and then I have someone else responding, I learn very quickly, ‘Really, someone would say that? I didn’t expect that.’ You can really build your system well from the beginning by doing some simple design exercises like that. Another thing that’s really important to understand about voice is that speech recognition is not perfect. Yes, it’s way, way, way, way better than it used to be, but it still makes a lot of mistakes. You have to build a graceful error recovery into every voice system no matter what. I don’t think, personally, that it will ever be a 100%. Accurate human speech recognition is certainly not 100% accurate. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about your error recovery. The tools ecosystem I’m actually very excited right now because I think we’re starting to see a lot of tools actually come out, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot of them. For example, there’s a company called PullString. They used to be called ToyTalk. They made the Hello Barbie and some kids’ apps like the Winston Show. They just put out an authoring tool. I downloaded it. I'm really looking forward to trying that for creating new sample dialogues, new stories. Then, there are things like TinCan.ai out of Conversant Labs, which I think will be really great for doing prototyping, which is something we’re solely lacking in the real world, the ability to do quick prototyping. Then, you’ve got a mixture other tools from places like API.AI, which was bought by Google; Nuance’s Mix; Wit.ai, which is Facebook. These allow you to build models by giving a lot of sample sentences and having that learned. For example, if you’re trying to build a calendar VUI, you might put a bunch of sample sentences in about how I want to schedule an appointment. It can learn from those examples so that when somebody says something new that you didn’t already write down, it can still understand. I’m just very excited that these tools are finally coming out. It’s always been the Holy Grail of the voice user interface, where we were always trying to build tools at Nuance. It’s very difficult to do. Hopefully, we’re really getting to the point where they’re workable.

The O'Reilly Design Podcast: The VUI tools ecosystems, and voice gender and accent selections.In this week’s Design Podcast, I sit down with Cathy Pearl, director of user experience at Sensely and author of Designing Voice User Interfaces. We talk about defining conversations, the growing tools ecosystems, and how voice has lessened our screen obsession.Here are a few highlights from our conversation: What constitutes a conversation? To me, I do have a definition of ‘conversational.’ I was talking about this at O’Reilly Bot Day last week. For example: my Amazon Echo. I don’t view the Amazon Echo generally as conversational because most of the things I do are one-offs. I’ll say, ‘What time is it?’ or ‘Turn on the lights’ or ‘Set a timer,’ and she’ll give me one response, and we’re done. If I go up to you and say, ‘How are you doing today?’ and you say, ‘Fine,’ and then we turn and walk away, I don’t really see that as having a conversation. That would not be a very good conversation. One of my definitions for ‘conversational’ is that it has to have more than one turn. A lot of times, with a lot of these voice assistants—let’s say, you can do multiple turns but they don’t remember what you said before. Each turn is like a brand-new conversation, which would be really annoying if you were talking to somebody and every time you said something, they didn’t remember anything you told them before. In relation to that, they really need to understand pronouns. This is something that humans or toddlers can understand. I can tell a toddler to, ‘Go get the red ball out of the green box,’ and it knows it. The kid knows that I want the red ball. Computers have a really hard time with that. It’s starting to improve. Google, especially, I think, is working hard on this task. I've heard that with Google Home, they’re going to be better about that kind of thing, but those are some of the things I think systems need to be conversational, and that could be either through voice or through text. Designing for how people talk not how you want them to talk My biggest principle and advice is to design for how people actually talk and not how you want them to talk. I think as designers and developers, we get very focused on whatever we’re building, and we think it’s very obvious: ‘Yes, the user will know what they can say here.’ It’s really not true. Especially if you're designing something like a virtual assistant, like Siri. She says, ‘How can I help you?’ That really sets up the user for failure in a lot of cases because you really can’t just say anything. There’s a limited number of things you can say. We need to spend a lot of time thinking about how will we communicate with the user, what they can actually say. There’s different ways to do that. One thing that’s really important is when you're first designing your system, spend a lot of time writing what we call sample dialogues, which are essentially back-and-forth conversations, like a film script between the voice user interface and the user. You write these down. Then, you read them out loud with somebody. You learn very quickly—if I wrote the system and I am reading my voice user interface prompts, and then I have someone else responding, I learn very quickly, ‘Really, someone would say that? I didn’t expect that.’ You can really build your system well from the beginning by doing some simple design exercises like that. Another thing that’s really important to understand about voice is that speech recognition is not perfect. Yes, it’s way, way, way, way better than it used to be, but it still makes a lot of mistakes. You have to build a graceful error recovery into every voice system no matter what. I don’t think, personally, that it will ever be a 100%. Accurate human speech recognition is certainly not 100% accurate. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about your error recovery. The tools ecosystem I’m actually very excited right now because I think we’re starting to see a lot of tools actually come out, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot of them. For example, there’s a company called PullString. They used to be called ToyTalk. They made the Hello Barbie and some kids’ apps like the Winston Show. They just put out an authoring tool. I downloaded it. I'm really looking forward to trying that for creating new sample dialogues, new stories. Then, there are things like TinCan.ai out of Conversant Labs, which I think will be really great for doing prototyping, which is something we’re solely lacking in the real world, the ability to do quick prototyping. Then, you’ve got a mixture other tools from places like API.AI, which was bought by Google; Nuance’s Mix; Wit.ai, which is Facebook. These allow you to build models by giving a lot of sample sentences and having that learned. For example, if you’re trying to build a calendar VUI, you might put a bunch of sample sentences in about how I want to schedule an appointment. It can learn from those examples so that when somebody says something new that you didn’t already write down, it can still understand. I’m just very excited that these tools are finally coming out. It’s always been the Holy Grail of the voice user interface, where we were always trying to build tools at Nuance. It’s very difficult to do. Hopefully, we’re really getting to the point where they’re workable.

In this exclusive SoundWorks Collection interview we talk with the sound team at PullString, an entertainment and technology company that combines art and science to enable computer conversation with characters. We discuss their conversational entertainment products including Humani: Jessie’s Story, available on Facebook Messenger, Talking Barbie, and ToyTalk family entertainment apps The Winston Show, SpeakaZoo, SpeakaLegend, and SpeakOrTreat.

This was our first podcast attempt many months ago before we started working with Patrick and Pullstring. A glimpse into how Chris and Jared met, their first barista competition experiences, and the general state of barista competitions circa 2006-2010. This was recorded in a random Volvo with an iPhone. Horrible audio quality but fun times.