Industry superstars Dave Isbitski, Howard Lerman and Chiori Hori are three of the more than 150 speakers and presenters who will appear at the VOICE Summit this summer at New Jersey Institute of Technology, organizers announced Wednesday.
The VOICE Summit, the nation’s largest multiday voice-first conference, will take place July 24-26.
Isbitski is the chief evangelist for Alexa and Echo and an industry leader who has helped support the launch of numerous platforms, frameworks and programming languages across an array of devices at Amazon and Microsoft.
Lerman is the founder and CEO of Yext, the leader in digital knowledge management. Yext’s mission is to give companies control over their brand experiences across the digital universe of maps, apps, search engines, voice assistants and other intelligent services.
Hori has been working on neural network-based technologies for human-robot communication at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories since 2015, introducing deep learning architectures as a key step toward real-world human-robot interaction.
The organizers of the VOICE Summit say the event will explore the voice ecosystem across health care, education, marketing, government, fintech, transportation, smart home and security.
There will be more than 125 talks, panels and hands-on sessions across an array of development, design, monetization and user experience topics. Organizers feel attendees will be armed with the knowledge to accelerate their career, startup or major company initiative.
Other distinguished speakers for the event include:
- James Poulter, head of emerging platforms, digital consumer engagement at Lego (Playing With Artificial Empathy);
- Lauren Lucchese, head of AI content, Capital One (Designing Conversations);
- Jan Neuman, director, applied AI research, and Jeanine Heck, VP of AI product, of Comcast (How Voice Helps Comcast Reinvent the Customer Experience);
- Jennifer Warner, senior editor of Mayo Clinic, guided by voice (Mayo Clinic on Call);
- John Rome, Arizona State University (Alexa Goes to College);
- Cris DeLuca, global director, digital innovation, Johnson & Johnson Innovation (Innovation and the Healthcare Experience).
Click here for the full lineup.
The VOICE Summit, which is being organized by Modev, includes sponsors such as Amazon Alexa, Yext, Audible, Applause and Orbita.
Community partners include New Jersey Tech Council, New Jersey Innovation Institute, Code for Newark, Women in Machine Learning and Data Science, Women Who Code, GDI, System of Systems, VoiceTechTO, Catalaize, BotsandAI, Women in Tech NJ/NY, #ODSC, NYC Blockchain AI, fuse machines, NYC Media Lab and CO Network. Media partners include geomarketing.com, Dreamplay.tv, Voicebot.ai and VoiceFirstFM.
Amazon will provide more than a dozen technology evangelists to conduct Amazon Alexa skills training for consumer and enterprise use cases.
Pete Erickson, founder of Modev, said he feels the event will be a gathering of all the top minds and products in voice technology.
“We fully expect this summit to be the epicenter for voice technology discussion as we bring together speakers and attendees from retail, health care, transportation, marketing, higher ed, government, startups and tech to discuss best practices, industry challenges and the future of multimodal engagement,” he said.
The VOICE Summit will be held at NJIT’s new Wellness and Events Center, a state-of-the-art, 3,500-seat arena and conference venue that opened this winter with the goal of increasing community engagement.
Lerman said he is thrilled to be involved.
“We are witnessing a major platform shift: the rise of AI-powered services like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant,” he said. “Voice search and AI are transforming how consumers discover businesses every day.
“At VOICE Summit, we’ll discuss this macrotrend and why businesses of all kinds need to manage their digital knowledge to win customers in this new era.”
