Voice Summit 2019: World of VOICE Technology Returns to NJIT 

“The Largest Voice Tech Event of the Year.”

That was the official event billing that stirred a groundswell of attention from technology leaders and innovators, global brands and thousands more at the 2019 VOICE Summit held July 22-25 at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). 

Nearly doubling the turnout for the inaugural VOICE in 2018, an estimated 5,000 attendees poured through NJIT’s campus over the four-day event to explore the latest-and-greatest in the growing world of voice-first technology, which is making its impact felt in everything from health care delivery, finance and business communications, to entertainment, shopping and home life.  

“It has been a ten-year journey to build a conference like this,” said Pete Erickson, organizer of the Voice Summit and founder of Modev, at the summit’s opening press conference Jul. 22. “Today, I am proud to say that we are bringing together people from more than 26 countries [for this week’s summit]. VOICE has become a platform event — an event of events — and we are excited to see where the future leads.”

VOICE 2019’s main event began Tuesday, Jul. 23, with the return of the conference’s keynote speakers to NJIT’s Wellness and Events Center (WEC) for the second-consecutive year. NJIT President Joel S. Bloom addressed the conference’s audience comprised of researchers, entrepreneurs and developers, as well as leaders from the world's top platform providers — the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Samsung.

“Newark is the fastest growing tech hub in the tri-state area, and is home to 55,000 college student staff and faculty,” said Bloom. “Voice is a technology that continues to improve every year … having the opportunity to host you all here, to engage, learn and network, is something that we [at NJIT] are very proud of.”

Amazon's Chief Evangelist for Alexa and Echo and NJIT alumnus David Isbitski ‘98, led as the conference’s first of three keynote speakers. Isbitski was followed by appearances by Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri and VP engineering at Viv Labs, and Noelle LaCharite, principal PM manager, Cortana, Microsoft.

“I remember walking the halls of NJIT around 1992 and seeing things like computer vision and machine learning, but we were limited…” said Isbitski. “To see how things have moved forward … I am so excited to be part of this community. People who are in this space love this space, and continue to drive innovation.” 

“What I most want people to leave with is that everybody’s ideas matter now,” LaCharite said after her stage appearance. “If I wanted to translate four languages in real-time a year ago, people may not have thought it was possible. Things have evolved to a place now where if you have an idea, odds are that we have the technology to build it.” 

Announcements, Live Demos and Startup Alley at VOICE 

Tuesday’s conference gave way to announcements of what’s to come from established and emerging names in the voice-first era. 

Isbitski unveiled Alexa’s Skill Flow Builder for interactive game designers, while Cheyer publicly announced Samsung’s Bixby Marketplace for users to shop voice services. Announcements also included new digital assistant technologies from Mercedes-Benz and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, among others.

“The big difference I’ve noticed from last year is the expansion in virtual assistance,” LaCharite said. “This year so many companies are saying that they’ve built their own virtual assistant or added voice to their mobile app … It shows in this year’s numbers at the conference, [voice] is getting much more democratized across companies and startups that are using it in all different ways.”

The arena’s second floor showcased scores of interactive technology displays from companies around the world, giving visitors the chance to explore new products and even experience walking through various smart environments. Amazon featured its own 8 ft.-tall smart home, with devices across the Alexa and Echo ecosystem.

Tuesday’s Startup EXPO also transformed the arena’s concourse into “Startup Alley,” where more than 100 startups from around the world were in line to network and demo their innovations. The crowd ranged from international entrepreneurs promoting conversational language training apps for children, to developers of ambient voice assistants for researchers and lab data collection, to creators of voice-first publishing platforms for authors and game designers.

NJIT’s Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Simon Nynens, was among the summit’s featured speakers on the topic of management and leadership. He addressed entrepreneurs and executives navigating the evolving voice-first landscape, where everything from daily business operations to consumer engagement is expected to join a broad trend of hands- and eyes-free tech mass-adoption: The number of digital voice assistants in use globally is projected to increase from 3.25 billion this year to nearly 8 billion by 2023.

“It is clear that this is an industry that is really coming into fruition,” said Nynens. “This is the next generation of entrepreneurs, building businesses from so many countries and networking here … I think that the international aspect of the event is fantastic.”

Topics Voiced in 2019
In all, the summit brought on board nearly 400 speakers and panelists across 17 “tracks” dedicated to addressing all reaches of the “Voice-first Revolution.”

LaCharite spoke to developers about customizing data models to design AI assistants. Members from the BBC, NPR and Australian Broadcasting Corporation, discussed how innovations in voice are “changing the information ecosystem” and the way they think about content production. 

Accessibility and inclusive design in next-generation voice technology was among the big topics tackled at VOICE 2019. Mark Greenfield, web accessibility officer at University of Buffalo, addressed accessibility on college campuses, while Cathy Pearl, Google’s head of conversation and design outreach, spoke about design of recent voice tech innovations for those with cognitive or physical impairments.

“To me, a lot of it is about working and talking with people who may have certain needs to understand where they come from and build something that helps them,” said Pearl. “But all of us are impaired at different times in our lives, so it isn’t just about just designing for some people here and some there … it is about building for everyone.”

“I think over the next decade voice is going to have a bigger impact on the student experience than the web does right now,” said Greenfield. “I look at this conference and believe we will be using a lot more of this technology. Unlike the web, I am hoping we consider people with disabilities from the beginning as we think about voice [design].” 

Students and Developers Share Stage at VoiceHacks
 
Along with the nearly 1,500 professional developers on hand, students were a key contingent represented throughout VOICE 2019. More than 1,000 students were in attendance this year through scholarships offered by summit sponsors. 

“We want to bring the youth into this market,” Erickson told ROI ahead of the event. “We want to show them the opportunities that they can build their career around.” 

With that, VOICE teamed students from the region’s universities and coding schools with professional developers around the world for the summit’s first-ever “VoiceHacks Hackathon.”

New Jersey Institute of Innovation’s Agile Strategy Lab at NJIT set the scene for a sprint-style hackathon — judged and sponsored by Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Bixby and Twilio Autopilot — where competitors set out to develop innovative voice apps and win tech prizes.

“Team Audio” took first place for their voice app build “Baby-Boom,” which uses Alexa and Twilio to create a customized voice reminders and tips for expecting parents. Team Audio members hailed from across the U.S.: Carter Kwon, developer at Arizona State University; Forrest Meyen, an engineer at Draper Labs; and William Cheng, an undergraduate at Stony Brook University.

“I’m still surprised, I thought there were a lot of other really great skills being built,” said Cheng. “It was really interesting seeing what everyone thought up, because we were struggling in the beginning deciding what to do.”  

“There was a lot of bright people in the room with such diverse backgrounds,” said Kwon. “Overall, it was really cool to see how voice is able to bring so many people together like this.”

Isbitski encapsulated the theme of the summit at NJIT in that he sees voice as the next big leap in human-computer interaction. “It represents an entirely new way of interacting with technology, and we see it as the next great frontier for developers,” he said. “We believe voice is the future.”

For more on the latest from VOICE 2019, visit: https://www.voicesummit.ai