VoiceTalks 3

Voice Talks Will Explore Education and Entertainment on June 25 Livestream

Voice Talks Presented by Google Assistant is coming back for its third episode to discuss voice technology in the realm of entertainment and education. The episode will livestream on June 25 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time, hosted as usual by Google Assistant’s co-lead of global product partnerships Sofia Altuna.

Edutainment

The new episode, officially titled How Voice Technology is Shaping Education and Entertainment, includes a mix of live interviews and taped seminars from a range of entrepreneurs and experts in the voice industry. The episode will kick off after Altuna’s introduction with a presentation from Voicebot’s own Bret Kinsella, who will share some of the data collected in Voicebot surveys and what they reveal about the current and future state of voice tech in education, as well as games and other entertainment. His presentation will be followed by Marco Lenoci from Google Assistants Partnerships discussing the specifics of incorporating voice into games and educational programs with Sony head of game publishing Paul Joffee and Bamboo Learning CEO Ian Freed.

After the virtual fireside chat, Google developer relations engineer Leon Nicholls will focus on how Google’s new Interactive Canvas and Actions Builder programs help developers design and build games that partly or entirely rely on voice technology. CoolGames senior software engineer Terry Janssen will explain to Mary Chen from Google Assistant developer relations how his company used the new tools to build its first Google Assistant games, due in July. The event will end with VoiceBrew newsletter and blog founder Katherine Prescott describing her methods for finding and sharing new voice apps and features, with a demo of how to activate them.

Talk On

With its third episode, Voice Talks is bringing back some previously featured experts mixed with new people, presumably based on feedback as well as the particular theme. As part of the process, the producers ask people who are going to watch to submit videos ahead of time, in this case, with answers about voice games they like to play. The episode will also keep the live interactive aspects where Altuna reads out interesting questions and comments in the chat area and tweets marked #AskSofia. This episode is notably heavy on Google employees, no surprise considering the sponsorship behind the series. It’s a good opportunity for Google to showcase some of the startups working with the tech giant that enhance Google Assistant with their creations. That’s especially the case right now, with the COVID-19 health crisis keeping more people home more often and turning to their voice assistant to educate and entertain them and their families.

“We’ve seen years of digital transformation take place in just a few months, including an acceleration of ambient computing,” Google Assistant senior director of product management Payam Shodjai said in a statement.  “Google is working with developers and partners to create exciting, engaging and interactive games, education tools and information systems at home that gives consumers more ways to have fun and learn as a family.”

  

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