Machine Yearning

It’s Machine Yearning from Assist. Another week where we continue on this adventure where marketers, brands, and entrepreneurs get to have a place to think, dream, and ask questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we’re reshaping our culture.

This week is a rocket. And the rocket has a name. Max Sklar.

Max is machine learning engineer at Foursquare and is a fountain of smart, concise thinking on privacy, social media and whether we’re looking at an imminent AI winter.

Assist’s Shane Mac got so much goodness from his fellow podcaster. We think this is an episode so packed with goodness you’ll want to give it a few listens and DEFINITELY share it with friends.

Then…! Make sure you check out Max’s pod - The Local Maximum. It’s awesome.

This week is a rocket. And the rocket has a name. Max Sklar.

Max is machine learning engineer at Foursquare and is a fountain of smart, concise thinking on recommendation, anticipation and how to break through with your product design.

In this chapter from the longer podcast, Assist’s Shane Mac got so much goodness from his fellow podcaster. We think this is so packed with goodness you’ll want to give it a few listens and DEFINITELY share it with friends.

Then…! Make sure you check out Max’s pod - The Local Maximum. It’s awesome.

This week is a rocket. And the rocket has a name. Max Sklar.

Max is machine learning engineer at Foursquare and is a fountain of smart, concise thinking and in the next 11 minutes Max and Shane are going to help you sound smarter about the problems of social media. The objectivity/ subjectivity conundrum, language classifiers, tweaks to the recommender system - Max hones in on several of the Gordian Knots that keep us stuck.

All of this has significant ramifications for everyone who is trying to figure out how to blend sentiment, community satisfaction and technology.

In this chapter from the longer podcast, Assist’s Shane Mac got so much goodness from his fellow podcaster. We think this is so packed with goodness you’ll want to give it a few listens and DEFINITELY share it with friends.

Then…! Make sure you check out Max’s pod - The Local Maximum. It’s awesome.

This week is a rocket. And the rocket has a name. Max Sklar.

Max is machine learning engineer at Foursquare and is a fountain of smart, concise thinking on privacy, social media and whether we’re looking at an imminent AI winter.

In this chapter from the longer podcast, Assist’s Shane Mac got so much goodness from his fellow podcaster. We think this is so packed with goodness you’ll want to give it a few listens and DEFINITELY share it with friends.

Then…! Make sure you check out Max’s pod - The Local Maximum. It’s awesome.

A few episodes back, Machine Yearning brought you a series of conversations from the VOICE conference. With over 2000 attendees at the largest gathering of the conversational technology world, VOICE was intense. You heard from voice and machine learning powerhouses like Cathy Pearl from Google and Patricia Scanlon, who has built a natural language data set from over a million samples of children under 12.

Now, we’re excited to present another individual with profound Natural Language Processing experience: Dr. Deborah Dahl. Deborah has been at the forefront of voice and speech, multimodal and accessibility standards design on the web for over 30 years. Her view on this space, and her sense of humor about it all, is fantastic. These days, Deborah is the Principal behind Conversational Technologies, a company that focuses on new, disruptive applications of speech and language technologies.

Let’s dive in, mid-conversation, where we asked Deborah to step back and give us some overview on notable projects from across her storied career.

A few episodes back, Machine Yearning brought you a series of conversations from the VOICE conference. With over 2000 attendees at the largest gathering of the conversational technology world, VOICE was intense. You heard from voice and machine learning powerhouses like Cathy Pearl from Google and Patricia Scanlon, who has built a natural language data set from over a million samples of children under 12.

Now, we’re excited to present another individual with profound Natural Language Processing experience: Dr. Deborah Dahl. Deborah has been at the forefront of voice and speech, multimodal and accessibility standards design on the web for over 30 years. Her view on this space, and her sense of humor about it all, is fantastic. These days, Deborah is the Principal behind Conversational Technologies, a company that focuses on new, disruptive applications of speech and language technologies.

Let’s dive in, mid-conversation, where we asked Deborah to step back and give us some overview on notable projects from across her storied career.

A few episodes back, Machine Yearning brought you a series of conversations from the VOICE conference. With over 2000 attendees at the largest gathering of the conversational technology world, VOICE was intense. You heard from voice and machine learning powerhouses like Cathy Pearl from Google and Patricia Scanlon, who has built a natural language data set from over a million samples of children under 12.

Now, we’re excited to present another individual with profound Natural Language Processing experience: Dr. Deborah Dahl. Deborah has been at the forefront of voice and speech, multimodal and accessibility standards design on the web for over 30 years. Her view on this space, and her sense of humor about it all, is fantastic. These days, Deborah is the Principal behind Conversational Technologies, a company that focuses on new, disruptive applications of speech and language technologies.

Let’s dive in, mid-conversation, where we asked Deborah to fill us in in some of her most recent projects and she wowed us on the breadth of what’s happening in speech-driven technology.

We spend our time here thinking, dreaming, and asking questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we’re reshaping our culture.

You wouldn’t think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand and the future of digital creative agencies would be Machine Yearning territory.

But they are - when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton.

Daniel is the CEO of Pyxl (that’s P-Y-X-L,) a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build and measurement. Before joining Pyxl this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet, where he partnered with Amazon and Google so that travellers could access Lonely Planet products through the Alexa device and Google Home. The company launched a platform for digital videos with GoPro and did a ton of e-commerce. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company’s 2018 "Most Innovative Companies" List and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30.

Now, Daniel is on the agency side and diving in to a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist and student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken and this was his first interview as PYXL CEO.

This is Machine Yearning, though, so this isn’t the typical arms-crossed-looking-manly-on-the-magazine-cover CEO interview.

Hang out and enjoy.

We spend our time here thinking, dreaming, and asking questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we’re reshaping our culture.

You wouldn’t think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand and the future of digital creative agencies would be Machine Yearning territory.

But they do - when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton.

Daniel is the CEO of Pyxl (that’s P-Y-X-L,) a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build and measurement. Before joining Pyxl this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company’s 2018 "Most Innovative Companies" List and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30.

Now, Daniel is on the agency side with PYXL and diving in to a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist and student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken and this was his first interview as PYXL CEO.

This is Machine Yearning, though, so this isn’t the typical arms-crossed-looking-manly-on-the-magazine-cover CEO interview.

Hang out and enjoy.

You wouldn’t think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand and the future of digital creative agencies would be Machine Yearning territory.

But they are - when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton.

Daniel is the CEO of Pyxl (that’s P-Y-X-L,) a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build and measurement. Before joining Pyxl this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company’s 2018 "Most Innovative Companies" List and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30.

Now, Daniel is on the agency side with PYXL and diving in to a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist and student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken and this was his first interview as PYXL CEO.

This is Machine Yearning, though, so this isn’t the typical arms-crossed-looking-manly-on-the-magazine-cover CEO interview.

Hang out and enjoy.

You wouldn’t think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand and the future of digital creative agencies would be Machine Yearning territory.

But they are - when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton.

Daniel is the CEO of Pyxl (that’s P-Y-X-L,) a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build and measurement. Before joining Pyxl this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company’s 2018 "Most Innovative Companies" List and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30.

Now, Daniel is on the agency side with PYXL and diving in to a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist and student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken and this was his first interview as PYXL CEO.

This is Machine Yearning, though, so this isn’t the typical arms-crossed-looking-manly-on-the-magazine-cover CEO interview.

Hang out and enjoy.

Today, an episode so packed with so many amazing folks, four of them, in fact, that we can’t wait to dive right in. But first, some quick scene setting.

A few weeks back, your humble pod accepted the invitation from the team at MODEV and attended The Voice Summit. It brought together over 2,000 people working at the front edge of voice, AI, Natural Language Processing, and conversational commerce. We hope there’s a Voice Summit 2019 because we were able to sit down with too many brilliant people.

First up, Patricia Scanlon on the trust, and data, needed to create voice recognition for children. Then Adva Levin lays out persona, gaming and behavior hurdles when building skills for kids. Bree Glaeser talks about finding natural language through research and the challenges brands will have in the voice future. Last, but by no stretch of the imagination least, Cathy Pearl discusses her experience with Actions on Google, disambiguation and the social nature of voice assistants. 

So what are you waiting for? Hit play!

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Patricia Scanlon at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest gathering of the conversational technology world. Patricia is one of the many folks we interviewed, people who are thriving at the front edge of brand, UX, research and design.

Patricia is the founder and CEO of SoapBox Labs and a pioneer in children’s speech recognition. Patricia and her Dublin-based team are deploying deep learning to build mammoth data sets of children’s voices so they have the opportunity to enter the world of voice-activated technology.  

This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Adva Levin at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest gathering of the conversational technology world. Adva is one of the many folks we interviewed, people who are thriving at the front edge of brand, UX, research and design.

Adva is a pioneer in voice-driven, children’s game development. Her shop, Pretzel Labs, creates voice-first games like Kids Court, where an Alexa based judge settles kids’ fights. Kids Court won the grand prize in the Alexa kid skill challenge. Adva is pushing out into new territory where we see how empathic, useful products can be educational, reduce screen time and, according to the users we’ve polled, be damn fun, too.

This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Bree Glaeser at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest gathering of the conversational technology world. Bree is one of the many folks we interviewed, people who are thriving at the front edge of brand, UX, research and design.

Bree is from The MARS Agency, where she’s leveraged her formal training as field researcher at Harvard Medical School and Parsons into the world of consumer insights and strategic global marketing. She’s helped to build voice assistants that help people navigate brick and mortar stores and it’s clear her thousands of hours of field work have paid off.  

This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Google’s Cathy Pearl at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest gathering of the conversational technology world. Cathy is one of the many folks we interviewed, people who are thriving at the front edge of brand, UX, research and design.

At Google, Cathy is helping people and brands figure out how to integrate voice assistants into their larger strategies. She has the perspective that only comes after you’ve worked your way through an incredibly diverse swath of projects, user needs and clients. She’s done voice assistants for auto, health care, and even fashion advice and got us to think in new ways about the social nature of voice assistants.

This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

Bias in our culture and in our technology, particularly in AI, is a mammoth issue. For those of you in the Machine Yearning faithful, you’ve probably noticed that we have a point of view about it here at the pod. If you hadn’t noticed, last week’s episode with Janeen Uzell and this week’s will make out position quite clear. We think being intentional, breaking bad hiring and management habits, and building inclusive teams is the only way the voice and AI space can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

This episode, we have three guests who provide guidance on how we can do that as we return to the VOICE Summit. Again - shout out to the MODEV team, the conference producers, for taking great care of us. Our guests are from the agency and user experience design world and each of them, in different ways, talk about how to make the most of this moment in time. And how the emerging voice space could blow it.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Will Hall at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest gathering of the conversational technology world. Will is one of the many folks we interviewed, people who are thriving at the front edge of brand, UX, research and design. Will is the Chief Creative Officer at the RAIN Agency. In this excerpt, he lays out how brands need to evolve and work in smart, new ways to own their brand voice so they move beyond recommendation and into anticipation. This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Josef Hapli at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest gathering of the conversational technology world. Josef is one of the many folks we interviewed, people who are thriving at the front edge of brand, UX, research and design. Josef is the founder and CEO of Ether - a DC-centered creative agency. In this excerpt, Josef lays out the flares for why brands who play it safe in the age of voice are courting irrelevance.  This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Brooke Hawkins at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest gathering of the conversational technology world. Brooke is one of the many folks we interviewed, people who are thriving at the front edge of brand, UX, research and design. Brooke is a content designer at NUANCE and in this excerpt she presents a compelling view on why an understanding of ethics, philosophy and the liberal arts is going to be a competitive advantage in designing useful voice technology.  This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

This week and for the next couple episodes, we’re taking you to the VOICE Summit - the largest single gathering of the conversational design ecosystem. 2 thousand people swarmed the New Jersey Institute of Technology July 24th through 26th. The team at MODEV crushed it and they took great care of us. While we were at VOICE, we spoke to tons of technologists and entrepreneurs, but we also met people who are living at the front edge of creating a more inclusive culture in technology product design. We’re not giving away family secrets when we point out that the US technology sector is not covering itself in glory by creating diverse, inclusive workplace cultures. Enter Janeen Uzzell. Janeen is New Jersey native who is on a mission to use her influence and voice to lead significant work that changes lives, communities and the world.  Most recently, Janeen was the Head of Women in Technology for GE. There, she worked across the 300,000-employee community leading a culture shift to accelerate the number of women within GE’s technical female workforce. Janeen spoke with conference organizer and friend of the pod Janice Mandel. In this conversation, they take a half step back from voice, and dig into the process of human-centric design on a global scale. How you design for kids. And how you build and lead inclusive, diverse teams - so you can attract and serve a diverse customer base. You’ve been in meetings where these topics come up. It’s hard, we get it. Today’s a chance to be a hero and part of the solution. Take a second and share this one around with your boss and every. single. person. in your group.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Janeen Uzzell at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest single gathering of the conversational design ecosystem. Most recently, Janeen was the Head of Women in Technology for GE. There, she worked across the 300,000-employee community leading a culture shift to accelerate the number of women within GE’s technical female workforce. Janeen spoke with conference organizer and friend of the pod Janice Mandel. In this conversation, they talk about how you build and lead inclusive, diverse teams - so you can attract and serve a diverse customer base. This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Janeen Uzzell at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest single gathering of the conversational design ecosystem. Most recently, Janeen was the Head of Women in Technology for GE. There, she worked across the 300,000-employee community leading a culture shift to accelerate the number of women within GE’s technical female workforce. Janeen spoke with conference organizer and friend of the pod Janice Mandel. In this conversation, they talk about how you weed the bias out of AI by building inclusive, diverse teams - so you can attract and serve a diverse customer base. This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.

This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Janeen Uzzell at the 2018 VOICE Summit - the largest single gathering of the conversational design ecosystem. Most recently, Janeen was the Head of Women in Technology for GE. There, she worked across the 300,000-employee community leading a culture shift to accelerate the number of women within GE’s technical female workforce. Janeen spoke with conference organizer and friend of the pod Janice Mandel. In this conversation, they talk about how the bias we inadvertently bake into our code reinforces and amplifies the bias in our culture. This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning.