HAL to Her: Humanizing Tech Via the Power of Voice

2. WHAT IS THIS PANEL ABOUT? Voice is powerful. Voice is human. From Amazon Echo to Cortana to a real life Star Trek communicator badge – technology has finally begun to find its voice. Hear from a panel of experts as they speak about how advances in AI and hardware will transform the way we interact with the people and devices around us. For decades, sci-fi fantasies have outlined a voice activated future where people interact seamlessly with the world around them, not a future where we all stare down at screens. As we move into a more tech enabled society, come hear how screens will fade to the background as voice takes the lead.

3. WHAT WILL I LEARN? • How close we are to a world activated by seamless voice interaction • Why it has been so difficult to perfect the voice experience • How some of the brightest companies are approaching the challenge of voice communication – and how far they have come thus far • Which markets will be impacted the most by better voice technology

4. Moderator: Brady Forest – VP, Highway1 Brady is Vice President at Highway1, PCH’s incubator program. A prolific speaker and maker on the geek scene, Brady can be found at speaking engagements around the world, inventing new forms of transportation at Burning Man, or creating in the Highway1 San Francisco workshop. Additionally, Brady writes for O’Reilly Radar, tracking changes in technology. Brady is the founder of Ignite, a geek event which has spread to over a hundred cities worldwide.

5. Panelist: Jesse Robbins – CEO & Founder, Orion A technology infrastructure expert with a background in emergency response, Jesse is working to bring the power of voice communication back to the consumer. Jesse’s inspiration for Orion came from his work as an EMT and firefighter, where he realized the power of real-time and heads-up communication. Prior to Orion, Jesse founded Chef (formerly Opscode) and is widely recognized for transforming the way companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo manage complex internet systems. Before Chef, Jesse served as Amazon’s “Master of Disaster,” where he was responsible for website availability. He also founded the Velocity Conference and helped start the DevOps movement.

6. Panelist: Lesley Carmichael – Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Lesley Carmichael, Ph.D. is a Principal Program Manager Lead at Microsoft, focused on language expansion scalability. Her team is responsible for delivering the tools and technology to efficiently expand speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis development across dozens of languages in multiple products and scenarios. Lesley joined Microsoft in 2006, and has shipped speech components in multiple Microsoft products including Windows, Exchange, XBOX Kinect, and Windows Phone 7. Lesley holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Washington, and she has applied her expertise in linguistics, phonetics and prosody to Microsoft’s SR and TTS development and human-computer communication research.

7. Panelist: Timothy Jordan – Senior Developer Advocate, Google Timothy is a Senior Developer Advocate at Google for Project Glass. He previously held the same role for Google+, helping to launch multiple plugins and APIs including the +1 button and Google+ History. He has taught broadcasting, theater, engineering and various forms of new media at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the Academy of Art University and the Digital Media Academy. He has a B.S. in Computer Engineering, a Theater Arts graduate degree and an M.F.A in Digital Arts and New Media from U.C. Santa Cruz. In his spare time he announces for the Santa Cruz Derby Girls and the Silicon Valley Roller Girls.