Open Voice #02 - Maarten Lens-FitzGerald

Sophie Kleber is the executive creative director at Huge, where she creates future-forward user experiences to help transform businesses and shape the way we use technology. From screen-based interfaces, to voice UIs, to sentient computing, Sophie’s work shapes some of the largest companies in the world, including IKEA, Under Armour, Goldman Sachs, and Warner Brothers. She is a thought leader in the future of design, has written on behalf of TED, and speaks regularly at SXSW.

Tijmen Schep is a technology critic and privacy designer who helps citizens, designers and policymakers understand new chances and challenges in our data-driven society. He illustrated the subjects that should be discussed, and demonstrated how things could be through various examples, such as his Candle project.

Open Voice co-founder shares the State of Voice with some of the recent events in the Voice domain.

Ellen Kok is a visually impaired. She helps people with a handicap, disease or a trauma to return to their job through her own company Phoenix Reintegration. At Open Voice, Ellen shared how she experiences a 'voice only' world.

Maarten is a business development manager for ReadSpeaker, one of the leading voice companies. He likes to help companies to create a text-to-speech voice that perfectly fits with their brand identity. His talk is all about 3rd party voices and what they entail.

Tim (Google) joined 9 years ago from a market research startup, and has held various positions ranging from SMB advertiser acquisition and Google brand marketing, to product marketing for Maps and Search. He is looking forward to launching Google Home later this year (yes, before Christmas 2018).

Daan and Finbar (Rabobank) worked alongside Google on the financial skill. What can you expect when you are a large (financial) corporate and you want to be cutting edge? Their story illustrates how it's possible to innovate in traditional environment.

Vera (KRO-NCRV) shared a different approach on building voice services. While arguably the most elegant user experience when it comes to the voice (all voices are pre-recorded), what can we learn from this approach? She shares the ups and downs of the process.

Stijn (Albert Heijn Online) did the conversational design of one of the largest retailers in The Netherlands. What are the lessons we can learn from them, and what does the roadmap look like for this household name.

Timo (PostNL) leads the development of one of the launching actions. He shares how they approached voice, and how it fits in the bigger picture for PostNL.

Joeri (BNR) shares why voice is such a natural match for BNR, what they did so far and how they plan to continue in the future.

Maarten presents the State of Voice

Max (Amazon) shared Amazon Alexa's lessons and gives guidance on how to create good voice services.

Michiel (House of Music) worked on sonic branding for over 10 years. He shares some of the similarities between sonic branding and voice and how you can benefit from it.

As Dutch entrepreneur, Murat (Flow.ai) is taking the conversational world by storm. He was courageous enough to make a live voice service using his platform on stage.

The state of voice - or, an update on where we stand in 15 minutes.

Ben Sauer, independent (voice) design strategist and speaker. Ben works with companies around the world to raise their design game. He’s already been talking about VUI for years. Ben offered honest and clear advice to those attempting to master the voice environment. “We really have no idea where this technology is headed, or what it can do. Our true calling should be to help make the system fail gracefully, so its users can help us make it better.” But the trouble is, users don’t really know what’s possible with voice, or what it can and can’t do. Our true calling should be to help make the system fail gracefully, so its users can help us make it better.” But the trouble is, users don’t really know what’s possible with voice, or what it can and can’t do. Listen to the whole talk to gain more insight on the subject from someone who has worked in the domain of conversational design of some time.

By Jeroen de Bakker, CMO and CDO at Talpa Radio. “Many people thought that the advent of streaming would be the death of radio,” he began. “But we saw it as an opportunity. After all, radio is streaming avant la lettre – it was streaming long before streaming existed. We make content 24 hours a day. There are plenty of opportunities to use voice technology.” Talpa develops JUKE, a personal music guide that offers complete Dutch radio access, non-stop playlists, and access to 50 million songs. With both free and premium subscription services, JUKE serves a wide Dutch audience and a specific need. “Although our customers’ needs have never changed, their behavior has. With JUKE, we can be with them anywhere and everywhere they are. We’re turning listeners into users. But music streaming is a competitive space, so we knew how important it is to develop a solution before our competitors do. Now, we’re refining and expanding it to ensure we continue to meet their needs and keep it personal.

By Daniël Sytsma, Founder and Executive Creative Director of Studio Kraftwerk. Diageo, one of the world’s leading alcohol distributers, wanted to explore the opportunities of voice, they called on him. “Diageo noticed that cocktails are becoming more and more popular in bars, but people rarely make cocktails at home. So, to help them out, we developed The Bar, an Amazon skill (voice’s equivalent to a mobile app) that offers recipes, instructions and lessons in how to make the perfect cocktail. You can even order ingredients and bartending tools directly with Alexa.” Daniël talked a lot about creating the perfect brand voice for The Bar. “We used a lot of humor and personality in our voice,” he says. “After all, it’s supposed to be a fun experience. Now, we’re looking into scaling up the idea to work with Google Assistant, and expanding the skill to include occasion-based party planning and functionality that allows Alexa to suggest cocktails form the ingredients you have on hand.”