In the Heart of Silicon Valley
2019 CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Held March 11th & 12th, 2019
Monday, March 11 | 8:00 - 8:45 | KEYNOTE
Social Applications of Conversational Interfaces
Michael McTear, Professor, Ulster University
Conversational interfaces (also known as chatbots, virtual assistants, or digital assistants) have been used widely in business applications such as marketing and customer service. Increasingly attention is being directed to social and humanitarian uses of conversational interfaces, such as providing companionship and advanced home monitoring of the elderly, healthcare applications, dealing with harassment at work, providing people in developing countries with new forms of support, and many others. This talk presents some chatbot applications currently under development at Ulster University in the areas of monitoring the elderly at home, mental health support, and bibliotherapy for disadvantaged users, and examines the issues and technical challenges that these types of conversational application encounter. The talk concludes with a discussion of the current state of conversational interfaces and suggestions for future developments.
Monday, March 11 | 8:55 - 9:45
TRACK 1
The state of conversational technology
Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, Voice Technology, SiriusXM
Speech recognition and natural language understanding are developing technologies. What is their status today and how will they evolve?
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Conversational AI: Separating Hype from Reality, Elyse Kufeldt, Conversational Design Manager, Nuance Communications
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Jimmy's World: Making sense of everyday life references, Eugene Joseph, CEO, North Side Inc.
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Best kept secrets to deploying Assistants in the real world, Nico Acosta, Director of Product - Conversational AI, Twilio
TRACK 2
The voice and personality of your application
Moderator: Jim Larson, Vice President, Larson Technical Services
The quality, naturalness, and "personality" of speech from an automated system can be a major determinant of its effectiveness.
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Testing Bots with Bots: Conversational CX Gives Rise to a New Breed of Testers, Mike Monegan, Vice President Product Management, Cyara
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Do as I Do, Not as I Say, Lisa Falkson, Senior VUI Designer, Amazon
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Give your Digital Agent a Branded Voice with Emotional Intelligence and Personality – Quickly and Cost Effectively, Shing Pan, Vice President of Marketing & Business Development, Speech Morphing
Monday, March 11 | 9:55 - 10:45
TRACK 1
Case studies 1: Experience with deployed conversational systems
Moderator: Sara Basson, Accessibility Evangelist, Google
Examples often make clear the advantages and challenges of a conversational system. This session contains such examples of deployed systems and their results.
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Elevating the Customer Journey with Conversational AI, Michael Johnston, Director of Research & Innovation, Interactions
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Voice to Action - AI for getting things done!, Rajat Mukherjee, Co-Founder and CTO, Aiqudo
TRACK 2
Advanced features in conversational systems
Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, Voice Technology, SiriusXM
Conversational systems can have advanced features such as security and dealing with more than one speaker in a conversation.
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The future of messaging as a platform, Mike Gozzo, CTO, Smooch.io
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Preserving Personal Privacy in Conversational Interactions with Digital Agents, Gerard Chollet, VP Research, Intelligent Voice
Monday, March 11 | 10:55 - 12:00
TRACK 1
Customer service and sales: Automation with natural language
Moderator: Marie Meteer, Senior Research Scientist, Pryon
Customers are frustrated with IVR menus. Improve self-service by letting them simply say or text about why they are contacting customer service.
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How Conversational Intelligence Drives Exceptional Customer Service, Somya Kapoor, Head of Product, Aisera
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The role of AI in financial services – how humans and machines will work together, Bob Hilborn, Head of US Operations, Flamingo AI
TRACK 2
Options in user interface design
Moderator: Sara Basson, Accessibility Evangelist, Google
Natural language processing technology can be poorly implemented. What are some of the considerations that make it most effective?
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Which metaphors do and don't work for digital assistants?, Michael Greenberg, Voice User Interface Designer, Google
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Affect, the ultimate differentiator - The Engineering of Emotion, Wolf Paulus, Principal Engineer, Intuit Futures, Intuit
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Chat vs. Voice: The Future of Conversational AI, Arte Merritt, CEO & co-founder, Dashbot
Monday, March 11 | 1:15 - 2:15
TRACK 1
Digital assistants and chatbots: The options
Moderator: William Meisel, President, TMA Associates
What are the options in interacting with digital systems with human ("natural") language? How does one judge the tradeoffs and platforms?
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Conversational commerce: emerging architectures for smart & useful chatbots, Victoria Livschitz, Founder and CTO, Grid Dynamics
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Using Conversational AI to get the most out of your Enterprise Database, Diego Ventura, CEO, noHold
TRACK 2
Issues in creating conversational applications
Moderator: Sara Basson, Accessibility Evangelist, Google
Talking or text with a user of an application in a way that doesn’t require instruction or detailed prompts is clearly a potentially powerful way of interacting with an automated system. But there are challenges created by today’s state of technology.
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Clarification and Error Recovery Dialogs, Marie Meteer, Senior Research Scientist, Pryon
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Hearing sense in smart devices, Alexander Goldin, Founder & CEO, Alango Technologies
Monday, March 11 | 2:25 - 3:25
TRACK 1
Digital Assistants in the Enterprise
Moderator: Deborah Dahl, Principal, Conversational Technologies
Digital assistants can make employees more efficient, making the use of enterprise software and operations easier and thus more fully utilized.
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Beyond Chatbots: How Augmented Intelligence Will Empower Employees to Excel, David Nahamoo, CTO, Pryon
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Conversational EdTech for Scalable Education, Dee Kanejiya, founder and CEO, Cognii
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Collecting Data in the Food Supply Chain using voice interaction: Updated Case Study, John Swansey, CoFounder and Chief Design Officer, AgVoice
TRACK 2
Fitting the application: Differences driven by the environment and the user
Moderator: K.W. (Bill) Scholz, President, AVIOS
Particular cases, such as hands- and eyes-free options in automobiles or home speakers and the availability of interface options other than speech, create specialized demands on a conversational system.
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Conversation with cars: Present and future of in-car voice interfaces, Jay Goluguri, Lead Product Owner, Toyota Connected North America
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Always on Voice - The Key for Conversational Interactions, Tali Chen, President, US and Chief Evangelist, DSP Group
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Communications Next, Catelyn Orsini, Voice Interface Architect, Plantronics
Monday, March 11 | 3:35 - 4:15
TRACK 1
Robots and social systems
Moderator: William Meisel, President, TMA Associates
Science fiction is coming closer to reality as limited-function robots reach commercial feasibility. Robots and other devices that simulate human traits must not only interact naturally, but display social awareness.
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Designing Valuable Experiences for Social Robots, Matt Willis, Lead UX Designer, SoftBank Robotics America
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Talking to Robots: Making it Work!, Charles Jankowski, Director, AI and Robotics, Cloudminds
TRACK 2
Building conversational systems that engage users
Moderator: Emmett Coin, AI R&D, ejTalk
"Conversational" interfaces raise expectations. How can we best meet those expectations?
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Like My Style: Conversation Style 101 for Bots, Sondra Ahlén, Principal VUI Consultant/Owner, SAVIC
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Second dates with Alexa: Designing voice experiences that users come back to, Neha Javalagi, Lead, UX Research and Design, Witlingo
Monday, March 11 | 4:30 - 5:30
TRACK 1
Best Practices in developing conversational systems
Moderator: Michael Johnston, Director of Research and Innovation, Interactions
What practices will make a conversational system most effective?
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An Introduction to the Bixby Platform, John Alioto, Chief Evangelist, Viv Labs / Samsung Electronics
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Virtual Assistants are both marvelous and god awful!, Alexandros Potamianos, CEO & co-Founder, Behavioral Signals
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Building Actions for the Google Assistant: Lessons from the Google I/O '18 Action, Sachit Mishra, Developer Programs Engineer, Actions on Google
TRACK 2
Technology challenges in conversational systems
Moderator: Alex Rudnicky, Research Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
The technology supporting conversational systems has passed a “tipping point” of practical deployment, but is still evolving, and there are many challenges.
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Wrangling the conversational Long Tail, Anish Mathur, Senior Offering Manager, IBM Watson
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Internationalizing a conversational platform, Joseph Tyler, Senior Conversation Designer, Sensely
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Beyond Chat Bots: Towards Truly Intelligent Conversational Agents, Peter Voss, CEO/ Chief Scientist, Aigo.ai
Tuesday, March 12 | 8:00 - 9:15 | KEYNOTE PANEL
Building a digital assistant or chatbot--What works and what doesn't
Moderator: William Meisel, President, TMA Associates
Experienced experts will discuss the issues in building effective conversational systems. Is this a major trend or a fad? What is the status of the core technology and development tools? What are best practices? What are potential mistakes to avoid?
Patrick Dexter, COO, Cepstral; Dr. Srinivas Bangalore, Director of AI Research Technologies, Interactions; Mike de la Cruz, CBO, Directly; Diego Ventura, CEO, noHold
Tuesday, March 12 | 9:25 - 10:10
TRACK 1
Digital assistants in customer service
Moderator: Deborah Dahl, Principal, Conversational Technologies
Customer service is a key area where conversational systems can have an impact, getting away from a frustrating series of menus to a prompt such as “Please say why you are calling.”
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A rose by any other name: the complexity of conversational design at scale, Editt Gonen-Friedman, Product Owner, CX Mobile Conversational AI, Oracle and Samrat Baul, Principal Conversation Design Lead, Oracle
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Accelerating Customer Response with Natural Language Search, Praful Krishna, CEO, Coseer
TRACK 2
Options in developing a conversational assistant
Moderator: Alex Rudnicky, Research Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Involvement in building an intelligent virtual assistant can range from simply providing guidance and examples to a solutions provider to getting into the details. What are the options and tradeoffs?
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Meet the Ultra Assistant, Maclen Marvit, CTO, SapientX
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Fake it till you make it: Prototyping for Voice User Interfaces, Obaid Ahmed, CEO & Founder, Botmock
Tuesday, March 12 | 10:20 - 11:05
TRACK 1
Understanding your customer: A key to effective conversational systems
Moderator: Jim Larson, Vice President, Larson Technical Services
There are many aspects to building a conversational system. But perhaps the most fundamental is understanding what the customer may say.
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Unsupervised Speech and Text Analytics based on 'NLP Architect' by Intel AI-Lab, Moshe Wasserblat, NLP and DL Research Manager, INTEL
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Analytics Powered by Conversation, Adrien Schmidt, CEO and Co-Founder, Bouquet.ai
TRACK 2
Natural language interaction in complex customer service
Moderator: Marie Meteer, Senior Research Scientist, Pryon
Some customer service automation using speech or text interaction is complex due to the wide variation in the way requests are posed.
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The Use of Chatbots And Machine Learning in the travel Industry, Maryna Shumaieva, Co-founder and CTO, CruiseBe
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The Future of Voice-based Intelligent Conversational Agents for the Enterprise, Itamar Arel, CEO, Apprente
Tuesday, March 12 | 11:15 - 12:15
TRACK 1
Making workers more efficient
Moderator: K.W. (Bill) Scholz, President, AVIOS
Speech recognition and natural language understanding can be used to help workers do their jobs more efficiently.
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The Rise Of Voice-Activated Assistants In The Workplace, Cory Treffiletti, CMO, Voicea
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How AI enables dynamic information access to a truly mobile retail workforce, Jesse Montgomery, Sr. Speech Technologist, Theatro
TRACK 2
Naturally! Not so easy
Moderator: Tom Schalk, Vice President, Voice Technology, SiriusXM
When a digital system uses human language - "natural language" - it creates expectations. How well can today's technology meet those expectations?
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An inter-lingual approach to dialogue understanding, Lisa Michaud, Director, Natural Language R&D, Aspect Software
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Resources and tools for natural language design: intents and entities, Deborah Dahl, Principal, Conversational Technologies
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Design and Evaluation of Multi-party Conversational Systems, Heloisa Candello, Research Scientist, IBM Research
Tuesday, March 12 | 1:30 - 2:15
TRACK 1
Case studies 2: Experience with deployed conversational systems
Moderator: William Meisel, President, TMA Associates
Examples often make clear the advantages and challenges of a conversational system. This session contains such examples of deployed systems and their results.
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Lessons Learned in Building a Conversational Chatbot using Open source Technologies, Saurav Chatterjee, Sr. Director, asurion
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IBM Travel Concierge: Personalize Trip Planning through Natural Conversation, Guang-Jie Ren, Manager, re*THINK Enterprise, IBM Research
TRACK 2
Natural language tools: A wide range of options
Moderator: Deborah Dahl, Principal, Conversational Technologies
When “machine learning” is used to develop natural language applications, it can sound intimidating. This session presents insights making those technologies more accessible.
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A data-driven approach to building AI-powered customer service virtual agents, Ofer Ronen, General Manager, Chatbase (Area 120 product at Google)
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Deep Reinforcement Learning for Conversational AI, Dr. Sid J Reddy, Chief Scientist, Conversica
Tuesday, March 12 | 2:25 - 3:25
TRACK 1
Building digital assistants intelligently
Moderator: Phil Shinn, Principal, IVR Design Group
The goal of automated interaction by natural language processing--text or voice—is to indeed seem natural. This session describes how to make such interaction more efficient and effective.
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Ten Lessons Learned: Launching Voice Experiences for Clients, Brielle Nickoloff, Voice User Interface Designer, Witlingo
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From Conversational Interfaces to Cognitive Interfaces, Dr. Sindhu Joseph, Co-Founder and CEO, CogniCor
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Designing for Conversational AI at the Edge, Jim Steele, VP of Technology Strategy, Knowles
TRACK 2
Challenges in conversational interaction
Moderator: Alex Rudnicky, Research Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Conversational interaction is a young technology. Some things you should consider…
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Evaluating the hearing capabilities of conversational systems, Joe Murphy, CEO, Vocalize.ai
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Revolutionizing the Voice Experience through Secure Neural Network Acceleration at the Edge, Saleel Awsare, Senior Vice of Corporate Marketing and Investor Relations, Synaptics
Tuesday, March 12 | 3:35 - 4:45
TRACK 1
Case studies 3: Experience with deployed conversational systems
Moderator: Michael Johnston, Director of Research and Innovation, Interactions
Experience with deployed conversational systems.
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Intelligent assistants in practice: Examples of deployed systems and their impact, William Meisel, TMA Associates
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Dialog Management as a Key Technology for Conversational Systems, Nathan Ziv, VP, Product Management, Invoca
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How digital assistants can positively impact small to medium size businesses, Ketan Shah, CEO, Agentz
TRACK 2
Creative improvement to the user experience
Moderator: Emmett Coin, AI R&D, ejTalk
Conversational technology is evolving rapidly as we learn how to make it more effective in all situations.
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The Career of a Conversation Designer: How it's evolved and what it takes to succeed, Jared Strawderman, UX Designer/Head of UX Framework, Google Assistant, Google
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How In-Queue Music and Messaging Slays the “On-Hold” Problem, Marcus Graham, Founder & CEO, GM Voices
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What we Believe About the Mind and How We Build AI, Robert Harris, President, Communications Advantage