
AVIOS
Conversational Interaction
Conference
CONNECTING WITH COMPUTERS - SPEECH, TEXT OR BOTH?

In the Heart of Silicon Valley
Interaction with digital devices and applications by text or speech in natural language is becoming increasingly important and increasingly feasible.
The CI Conference, held January 30-31, 2017, focused on the content of talks, with no exhibit hall. The Program indicates the depth and breadth of what is happening commercially in using natural language with text or speech interaction as a key enhancement of the user interface with digital systems. Attendees praised the content, quality of talks, and the intimate and friendly networking atmosphere.
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ATTENDEE AND ANALYSTS COMMENTS
Talks from some true experts - I heard answers to some questions which are critical to design approaches for new and emerging conversational interfaces.
This was truly a great conference, attended by some very special/intelligent people in the industry. Great atmosphere for networking and everyone I spoke to who came for learning got what they came for.
“Overall, whether talking about the efficacy of deploying virtual assistants to offload customer service agents, or launching VAs and Bots to better engage and even entertain customers, the conference presenters highlighted how far technically we have come since the early days of speech-enabled IVR. And the good news is that we are only just starting with much more to come.” Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. Read more.
“The CI-Conference is the successor of the Mobile Voice Conference, and like its predecessor, organized by Bill Meisel and AVIOS (Applied Voice Input Output Society). The two day conference (1/30-31) ran like clockwork at the Westin in San Jose, had a keynote, two keynote panels, and 26 sessions.
What makes this conference unique, is how it balances academia and industry experts, all coming together, to share their latest R&D and market activities. Moreover, a conference where about 20% of the participants are also presenting, has to be all about knowledge exchange and open discussion. If a presenter get’s out of a session alive, he probably proved his point – I’m only partially joking, but find it quite refreshing that at this conference opposing ideas can be discussed instead of being sugarcoated. No need to worry though, given the tight schedule, all were saved by the bell; and before you get the the wrong idea, the atmosphere of the conference was intimate and friendly. It was a great networking event.” Wolf Paulus, Principal Engineer, Intuit. Read more.
“Participation in the conference and enthusiasm among the speakers and attendees suggested that conversational interaction is now a mainstream trend.” (LUI News)
I go to a lot of conferences, and I can truthfully say that this one was much more interesting and collegial than average!
I enjoyed catching up with former friends in the industry and made some great new connections.
I learned a lot and had some great conversations throughout the event.
Our experience at the CI/ MV conference just keeps getting better.
Conference Organizers
Applied Voice
Input Output Society
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Sunil Vemuri, Product Manager for Google Assistant
Sunil Vemuri is a Product Manager for Google Assistant. Sunil is responsible for building the platform and enabling partner integrations with Actions. Prior to Google, he built and oversaw speech, mobile, and context-aware products and innovations at reQall, Apple, France Telecom, and MIT. He holds a Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab for his work on an audio-based personal memory assistant.

Dr. Lisa N. Michaud is a Data Architect at Aspect Software
Lisa has been centrally involved in the integration of natural language processing components into Aspect’s product suite for customer engagement and has been a shepherd for projects developing Interactive Text Response (chatbot) portals for customer self-service. She holds a PhD in Computer Science and has more than 20 years of experience researching, publishing, and presenting in the fields of Computational Linguistics and User-Adaptive Interaction.

Jay Wilpon, Senior VP, Natural Language Research, Interactions
Jay focuses on technologies to enable the “Interface of Things,” an intelligent and intuitive user experience for interacting with information and services seamlessly across virtually any device at home, on the road or in the office with unprecedented performance.
During his career, Jay has been a leading innovator for a number of industry-defining voice enabled services, including AT&T’s How May I Help You service – the first nationwide deployment of a true human-like spoken language understanding service.

Dan Bagley, CEO, Cepstral
Dan Bagley is a tenured, global sales executive. He is the Chairman, investor, and CEO of Cepstral, LLC and the founder of B&B Management Labs, LLC. Dan is a former US Navy Nuclear Power instructor, serving aboard fast attack submarines. He has held Vice President of Sales and/or Marketing Positions with General Signal Pump Group, Robert Bosch Fluid Power, and Sophus Berendsen USA.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Dan Bagley, CEO, Cepstral
Dan Bagley is a tenured, global sales executive. He is the Chairman, investor, and CEO of Cepstral, LLC and the founder of B&B Management Labs, LLC. Dan is a former US Navy Nuclear Power instructor, serving aboard fast attack submarines. He has held Vice President of Sales and/or Marketing Positions with General Signal Pump Group, Robert Bosch Fluid Power, and Sophus Berendsen USA.

Rob Chambers, Speech and Audio Platform Engineering Manager, Windows Devices Group, Microsoft
Rob Chambers is the Group Engineering Manager for the Speech and Audio Platform team at Microsoft, where he is responsible for integrating speech and natural language into all Windows 10 devices. Previously, Rob managed the delivery of all cloud based systems that power Cortana, Microsoft’s personal digital assistant. Rob has spent 20+ years at Microsoft driving the advancement of speech and natural language across a wide spectrum of Microsoft products.

William Meisel, President, TMA Associates; Editor, LUI News (on the Language User Interface)
William Meisel, president, TMA Associates, is publisher and editor of LUI News (a paid-subscription monthly newsletter on commercial applications of the Language User Interface), author of the 2013 book The Software Society, and a consultant on market and product opportunities created by the maturing of speech and natural language technology. His experience in speech technology includes founding and running a speech recognition company.

Dr. Lisa N. Michaud, Data Architect, Aspect Software
Lisa has been centrally involved in the integration of natural language processing components into Aspect’s product suite for customer engagement and has been a shepherd for projects developing Interactive Text Response (chatbot) portals for customer self-service. She holds a PhD in Computer Science and has more than 20 years of experience researching, publishing, and presenting in the fields of Computational Linguistics and User-Adaptive Interaction.

Raj Tumuluri, Principal, Openstream
As principal at Openstream Inc, Raj has been leading the Multimodal Virtual Assistant Platform for Connected Everything and is a co-author of several W3C's Multimodal Interaction Standards & books. His current research focuses on improving accuracy & usability of virtual assistants leveraging deep learning and conversatinal AI technologies

Sunil Vemuri, Product Manager for Google Assistant
Sunil Vemuri is a Product Manager for Google Assistant. Sunil is responsible for building the platform and enabling partner integrations with Actions. Prior to Google, he built and oversaw speech, mobile, and context-aware products and innovations at reQall, Apple, France Telecom, and MIT. He holds a Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab for his work on an audio-based personal memory assistant.

Jay Wilpon, Senior VP, Natural Language Research, Interactions
Jay focuses on technologies to enable the “Interface of Things,” an intelligent and intuitive user experience for interacting with information and services seamlessly across virtually any device at home, on the road or in the office with unprecedented performance. During his career, Jay has been a leading innovator for a number of industry-defining voice enabled services, including AT&T’s How May I Help You service – the first nationwide deployment of a true human-like spoken language understanding service.

Dr. Ashwin Ram, Senior Manager Alexa AI, Amazon
Dr. Ashwin Ram is Senior Manager of AI Science for Alexa, the intelligent agent that powers Amazon Echo and other devices. He leads R&D initiatives to create advanced technologies for conversational agents, including the university-facing Alexa Prize competition.