Brian Roemmele: [02:04:54] Beautifully stated, Karen. I’ve got to add ... you mentioned earlier about this concept of mediation, and this is a big problem and it's going to require deep context. Deep context extraction is so important. Apple's working brilliantly, and I've studied ... there's about two patents out there right now ... and how Siri is going to mediate between different devices. Amazon really needs to deal with this. Google is going to have to deal with it. And it is a massive problem, potentially, but it is easily solved if you go away from the tech side of it, and go down the psychological linguistics side of things. What are you asking the intent extraction? And what is the deep context about what you're asking? And that should really be informing you what device is reacting. And a lot of the workers that are challenging these problems you know a lot of the programmers aren't thinking in those terms. And you know, Ahmed and myself, we talk about this all the time. It's because we have the wrong people going after the problem. It's not really a technology problem. It is a psychological issue, because you're dealing with humans. What do you really mean, and why do you why do you mean it? And that's where we need to really address it.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:05:56] Apple is an apple, Alexa is an orange, and they're comparing apples oranges. And I think you can't just take, to Karen's point, something that is designed for farfield, which is a beautiful art form. For nearfield, it just sucks. Alexa doesn't have the feature that Syria has, because Siri has had multiple years to develop and so forth. So anyway, I didn't try it myself, so I'm just talking theoretically but I think they can. So putting it on the phone is probably a good thing to have, but I think comparing it to Siri right is probably not fair. It will have its own roadmap, and that roadmap is not going to be as simple, linear, translational or whatever Alexa has for the farfield. I think whoever is product managing it....somebody should be product managing Alexa on the smartphone as a product in its own right as opposed to simply a linear....as I was saying, translation of Alexa on farfield.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:06:40] I've got to ask Ahmed....and you bring up an incredible question here. This idea of voice as a transplant on top of the operating system to do things inside the operating system whereas with a personal assistant, These are unfortunately, two forks in the road almost. And I think Apple has done fairly well in making Siri near-field, obviously even probably the best near-field system right now, but Alexa doesn't really have the connections to do any of the deep phone things that Siri can. Do you see these things merging? Do you see that as being the way they should be or should it be separate?

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:07:18] Well, I don't think they're going to merge because I think there are certain things you will do with your phone that we wouldn't do by speaking, and vice versa, but I think what needs to happen really is that Alexa will recognize your voice, just like Google does recognize your voice and then personalize the experience over farfield use case to the extent it can know who you are. So it is to a certain extent, a personal assistant. But it is not completely to the extent, say, it is with your phone, because in your phone, you are doing a lot of other stuff in addition to speaking to it to search and to do things. So I think there is a level of personalization that needs to emerge by recognizing voices, but I don't think we'll have a unified one assistant that can be engaged with regardless of the modality. Farfield and nearfield and then you have the headphones. That's yet another use case. I think these are all....and to your point Bryan and also Karen, I think the interface and the experience are core to what is the optimal way of doing something within that interface. I don't think we can have a unified way of interacting that can just be a one stop shop, so to speak.

 

Karen Kaushansky: [02:08:16] I gave a talk about a year ago at the O'Reilley Design Conference, and it was called "I Hear Voices." And it was exploring multi-device experiences. So when you say OK Google, and you have three devices listening....I'm just suggesting some ways that we should be thinking about this. So I'll send that out to the group here and you can maybe have another conversation at another time.

 

Bradley Metrock: [02:08:36] Sure. And we'll post that link or whatever resource that is to show notes and make that available as part of this episode. So that's great. And we will move on to story number four, which is a bit of a one-off. It's an article that's basically discussing how marketers are scrambling to catch up with the exponential increase in voice-first technology, and as somebody who is naturally interested in marketing....I could say it's not hard to confuse people in marketing. It's pretty simple. So the headline is sort of one of the most obvious headlines I've ever read. But the punchline of the article comes at the very end when it gives a data point about how by the year 2020, as much as 50 percent of search will be done by voice. And that's kind of crazy. And if that ends up being true, that's going to change everything. So Ahmed, I want to start with you on this. What are your thoughts in terms of how products and services need to be assessing this new realm of voice technology for how they're going to raise the awareness of what they're doing?

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:09:41] First of all, I'm going to do a shameless plug and ask people to go to Witlingo.com and see what we're trying to do for digital marketers. I think it is not fair to say that marketers are scrambling. I mean, it seems to me that marketing communication departments are always scrambling because technology is changing and their job is hard. It's hard to get the word out about a product. Human beings are distracted by a million things. And to grab somebody's attention is a very, very hard thing. So I think people underestimate how difficult it is to get market share or mindshare of people who are busy and have things thrown at them. So we've seen them scrambling when the Internet came in, when mobile came in, and social media came in. And it's the nature of the fact that technology is new, and it takes time to understand how it fits within the current ecosystem of how people are marketing their product.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: And I think it is just the nature of the business, that first, the marketers have to understand it, secondly the marketers have to go and add to the workflow how they communicate to the market. And number three, people who are being marketed to have to be receptive to the marketing techniques that are being used. So it's a complex problem. I don't think it's fair to say that they are scrambling. I think they're figuring it out. I don't think they're coming late to the game, it just takes time for these things to evolve in a way where it stabilizes until the next disruption, and then they have to adjust to whatever is coming up next. I don't see it as them being behind the ball. I think they are just trying to absorb something that is complex, given that their job is complex.

 

Karen Kaushansky: [02:10:57] Yeah, so a couple of things that I kind of disagree with in this article. It's trying to position voice, first, and it's saying that there's a world ahead where voice, not text is king. So here's what I believe: that a lot of this is being driven by things like app fatigue, finding information, going to Web sites....does the store open at 9:00 a.m. or 10 a.m. on Sunday? I just want to ask. I just want to know the answer to my question. And whether that's voice or text, whether it's a conversational assistant that I'm actually typing to or I'm speaking with my voice, I just want answers to my questions. So that's why we're seeing all of these chat bots and messaging platforms that let you interact with the brands, because it lets you instantly interact in the way that you want on your own terms. Voice is a part of that, in certain contexts, but I don't think that it's just voice. I think that it's also text. I just read this little note on Kia, around the Super Bowl, created a Nirobot. So they have this new vehicle, and so on Facebook Messenger, they created a Nirobot. And it let people text and interact with Kia well before the vehicle was even available for sale to start the conversation earlier. And they said they got about 15,000 interactions during that Super Bowl campaign to create brand awareness and to start the customer conversation even before a vehicle was available. "Does it come in red?" "Can I get leather seats?" Right? And so whether it's text or voice, I think the the the interactions are changing for marketing. But I don't think it just has to be with voice.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:12:29] I've got to agree with Karen. And I'm a champion of voice-first. I think it's going to absolutely dominate, and quite frankly, I believe the number, 50 percent of searches is probably going to be a little on the lower side. It's actually going to go higher. Yet the other forms of modalities, the other systems are still going to be at play. I think what's happening and what's going to happen is the field is going to expand that much wider. People are going to use searching or interactivity much more because a barrier to access is going to be lowered. And we still think about this like....let's face it, most of the people listening to us, and including us. We're in the 1 percent, and that 1 percent is technology adopters and early technology adopters and we represent a very, very critically small part of the greater population. It's very easy to lose track of that with the power of voice, and what most people in technology who think I'm crazy when I started screaming about how important this is....they don't understand what fly-over country looks like for a lot of different reasons.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:13:27] When you start going out to the rest of the country and parts of the world, people just use technology as a tool in their life and they self-integrate it in ways that we, as designers, don't necessarily expect. Here's the powerful thing about voice. There's one thing that we know about voice, and there's this theme and there's a thread that connects ideas and concepts together and people interact. And once people feel that power the bridge is that voice of theirs into the technology that maybe they didn't feel so well connected to....maybe they jump on Facebook and like a picture, and maybe they kind of interact within a cursory way, but they're not enveloped in it the way most of the technologists are. The voice will allow them to be enveloped in a technology in a way that they've never seen before. And that's going to be the greater part of the population. And we could see it with the youth. The very young fall in love with voice. I've seen it with my own eyes, I've seen it with the studies, I've done 19 studies that have looked into how youth and younger individuals adopt into voice. Now let me jump in to brand....when I say "Alexa, order the paper towels.' And I'm a brand that makes paper towels. I now have a big quagmire. That quagmire is, what is my brand in a voice-first world? What does it look like? The bottom line is, what it looks like is nothing.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:14:40] Your logo doesn't really equate in the voice-first world. So what equates? What equates is character and personality. I'm here in Southern California. I work with a lot of people in the creative fields that have helped storyboard this future for brands. That's something that a wind up doing as a startup but you know the basic idea is this. If a company's logo is a brand, in a voice-first world they better be thinking in deep detail what that brand sounds like, acts like, feels like in that space or else they're going to miss that space. And it's very much like the early days of the Internet. It's like, "Well what am I using the Internet for? I have distributors. I don't have any real communications with my customers. I go on network TV, spend a few million dollars branding with....your fingers are soaking in it, and all this other stuff." And you create these commercial messages but those modalities are fading away obviously.

 

Brian Roemmele: What's going to be replacing it is the direct interaction between the consumer and the brand in this voice-first realm. And it sounds futuristic, but it isn't. It's as simple as having a conversation with a company and/or the brand. And if you get a knee jerk reaction, and you just do snarky, or you just do funny, or you just do boring, straight communication, you have disintegrated the brand equity that you've built up over X number of years. So this is going to be the challenge of this next epoch. So this article reaches to some of that, but obviously it's not going to the depths that I am, I've thought about this for over 30 years, so maybe I got some insight on it. But the bottom line is, if you've got a brand and you're listening to me right now, you better start thinking about it. Because if you don't do it, the consumer is going to assign a personality to your brand on their own.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:16:18] I just want to say that for me, a brand is not the logo or the voice. It is the experience that I have when I'm using the product. So with Scott's paper towels, the brand comes to life when I'm using it and it works better than any other towel. That's when the brand comes up. The brand in TV and the voice and all that are signified that say, "It's me, hey it's me!" Right? But you know what, when I'm ordering my paper towels, when I want to say, "Alexa, get me more paper towels." And my brand has been asserted by me by the fact that I only buy that brand. I don't need to hear the voice....that's what it means. I want that thing. Next time, if I don't have a good experience with the product itself, that brand is going to be "dinged" in there. Which is how it should be. Meaning we have endured people who have crappy products but have big budgets and can buy commercials ad nauseum and get people to buy the product. And a better product that is not marketing itself as well is being neglected. Now, hopefully with the disappearance of that medium, where somebody can fool you into buying their brand because they sound nicer or do better and all that where they have budgets, where the bottom line is going to be the brand is the bottom line. Is this product good or not? I think it may be that voice is going to become the great equalizer. But anyway, it's a topic we probably should think about, because I think it's a great thing that you called out there, Brian, I think it's an interesting thing that may do away with some falsehoods and some artificial things that have been contaminating the greatest product on that category vs. another one.

 

Bradley Metrock: [02:17:36] Yeah, it's all great analysis. And my personal opinion is that I don't think it's going to completely erase the brand meaning in our consumer society, but it certainly will level the playing field because you won't have to be a Proctor and Gamble brand in a voice-first environment to compete. You can do all sorts of runs and get your products out there without having to to establish that. And yeah, I saw a very interesting article....Brian to your point, shed some light on it but it certainly doesn't take a deep dive, that's for us to do. So all of y'all's commentary is greatly appreciated. Moving on to story number five, Google Home launches in Australia today, with the slang to match and this article talks about how....very interesting article discussing how Google has prepared the launch of Google Home in Australia by adding the slang and really making sure all the verbiage is there that Australians use, and really being very meticulous and describing a very meticulous thought process into how to launch their product in that market. So Karen I want to start with you on this. And my question is does this sort of thing normally happen? I would assume it does. Can you shed a little bit of light on is this typical product launching in the voice realm, or is this just something specific for this marketplace.

 

Karen Kaushansky: [02:18:54] This is the right way to do it to really understand where you're launching what the culture is the language. OK. They talk English with a different accent than we do, but it's much more than that. I would say it's just the same as launching in a different country with a different language. You want to understand who your target is, how they ask for things. Direct translations don't work. So I think it really shows that for any country, that there are differences that you need to build in from the start in order to be successful. I mean, this is a product that people pay money for, and if they try it, and it doesn't work, they're going to send it back. And this will set them up much better for success.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:19:32] I fully agree with Karen. I think being foresighted enough to actually look at each English speaking marketplace in the right realm is a big testament to Google. Google doesn't always get everything right, but they got this part right really well. And again, I've got to say Nandini and the teams up there....Google is going very far down the road to try to understand the linguistic nature, the psychological nature of how humans interact via communication. And I think if they continue down this path, they're going to do wonderful. So I think it's a good move on Google's part. Siri is right up there. I mean, I can't say enough about how well Apple has been doing in that realm also. But you know obviously Apple has really let a lot of things slide in the other areas, but they've done really well in getting language and getting the culture down fairly well. And again the personality, these personalities are immensely important. And this may be the signs of Google finally understanding that your voice-first system needs to have a personality, must have a personality, an overt personality and if you don't assign one, it will be assigned by the user. This is human nature, and you cannot change it with any code. So I believe that that is going to be the beginning. I'm hoping and I have a prayer circle for Google to actually name their device. I'm hoping that at some point they'll get a name for it and stop this shenanigans of saying, "OK Google." I hope those days are behind us. I think it's a good move. Though let's not negative this. It's a great move for them to do what they've done.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:20:57] Yeah, I concur. Definitely. I think Google going to Canada, going to Australia, I think that's fantastic. I don't know what's going on with Amazon. I think they need to get their act together and hopefully get on board and getting there Alexa up outside of the U.S. and U.K. and Germany. I think these are the only three countries we have at this point. So I think I think it's a great move by Google. And I think Google is pursuing....I'm glad that they're not just chasing numbers of Skills as Amazon is. I think Amazon is doing a great job with building the ecosystem, but I think it is smart for Google to be thinking perpendicularly as opposed to horizontally, trying to compete and leveraging other assets, in this case going international.

 

Bradley Metrock: [02:21:27] I appreciate that analysis. Moving on to story number six, Bespoken launches Silent Echo which is something they put together, a tool that allows text-based silent interaction with Alexa. And then Opearlo launched something called Sound Owl, which was referenced earlier in this part cast as well, which allows the creation of five minute short casts that can be broadcast on their Alexa Skill. So Brian, I'm going to start with you on this. Give me your thoughts on either one or both of these things, and just in general, the importance of companies being able to act on their own in support of what these big tech companies do to make money for themselves and further the ecosystem in their own way.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:22:07] Great question Bradley. I call it voice-first but it's not voice-only. There are appropriate times when people need to text into a voice platform. And I think that should be an "a priori" on all platforms. I don't know why it's not. And this idea of chat bots versus voice bots....that needs to stop. I think we can blame Facebook for that. And I think ultimately it has to do with the ecosystem inside of Facebook being textual. I think that's going to be changing very soon. You heard it here. Let's just say this. Facebook will have a hardware device, and it will absolutely floor people in the next 18 months. But this idea that you can only to use voice is just as ridiculous as only using your thumbs. But on the other side of it, there's this premise that....and I'll use a quote. "Millennials don't like to talk." First off, that could have been said by Plato. There's a certain range within your life where you just don't speak as much. And maybe you're not as articulate. And maybe it's when you finally get out of college, and you get your wings that you can maybe finally get articulate. Some people aren't that good about it. Right? So that's part of it.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:23:04] The other part of it is, yes we stunted a whole generation by letting them be face down thumbs ready into these devices only because our devices didn't understand what we had to say. Now that they can start understanding what we have to say, the generation just under them, the younger generation, I've studied very intently. They will have none of this. They will talk to their devices. The younger generation will demand and expect computing devices, as they get older, to respond to them by voice just like how they demand and expect every screen to have touch screen. Apple has this thing, "Let's not make the screen touch screen on our laptops." My son came up with a very simple equation. And he said, "Dad, if the iPad was invented before the laptop, it would be ridiculous to think a laptop not to have a touch screen." Done. That's it. That's the wisdom right there. So that solves the equation there. He also said the same thing. He said, "I would never think of having a computer that doesn't have the ability to understand what I'm saying and being able to read back to me the stuff that I don't want to be reading." So yes, texting into it is important. Telephone phobia. Look it up folks, it's a real problem in the 1800s. All of the Bell Systems got together and they literally had seminars in group encounter meetings with people who were afraid to talk to inanimate objects. It became a real psychological problem. I own some of the only research into that. Most of it has been discarded. It's not on the Internet.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:24:26] There are 19 really good studies about telephone phobia that took place in the early 1900s. And telephone phobia came out with this idea that humans just could not talk into devices. They didn't feel confident. They felt that people were watching them, and they were judging them. And if you look at the very early telephones they had bells and the bells were eyes, and the little speaker was a nose. That was designed to try to let this thing become less intimidating. It worked to a certain degree. We're seeing that too right now in the population. And I'll tell you how you can see it. If you see people walking around holding their phones parallel to their mouth, that typifies them as somebody who's probably talking into a voice assistant or maybe having a speaker phone conversation. If you have somebody having the phone up to their ear, well they're probably having a conversation. Here's how I solved telephone phobia. Hold the phone to your ear like you're having a conversation. It's done. If you can handle having a conversation respectfully in public, don't annoy people, you can talk to your personal assistant the same way. And if you happen to have an Airpod in....I love Airpods for near-field communications, it's another way to communicate. So yes, this idea of texting, I think it's a powerful thing.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:25:33] The only thing I'll add....well first of all, I'm not surprised that your son was saying those things given that I know you are Brian so you haven't...(incomprehensible) And secondly, I think what you said sounds fascinating. I would love to find out more about this phobia. Sounds like a book or two that the historian of technology could write given where we're going. I think whatever history we can dig up from the past would be probably very relevant and informative about what we're facing coming up next.

 

Bradley Metrock: [02:25:59] Moving on to story number seven, and this one....from time to time on this podcast, there will be, for a variety of reasons, stories that will get mentioned but will not be subject to discussion. There's just no reason to have a discussion on this in here. Karen, Brian, and Ahmed say how terrible this is. No, I'm teasing. But we were very fortunate to have our first major sponsor for the Alexa Conference and I bring this up in context of a story that we had last week about Mississippi and Utah both jumping on board developing your own Alexa Skills. This story is a Tennessee-specific one. Chattanooga, specifically. It's a very up-and-coming town, the first city in the United States to have gigabit internet. So there's a really profound tech story behind the city in the first place. They're really supporting the Alexa Conference. The major utility there is all about it, and we're going to be announcing several other sponsors that will surprise some people in the coming weeks. But it's important I think, for people to know and just to state for posterity's sake that voice technology is more than just the Bay Area. It's more than New York and Boston. It's everywhere. It needs to be everywhere. There's hunger for it everywhere. Everybody in Tennessee I talk to about not just VoiceFirst.FM, but the Alexa Conference is all about it. And don't get me wrong. The Alexa Conference is going to pull people from all over the world. People from both coasts will show up. People from fly-over country will show up. But Tennessee is all about it. And so it just sort of needed to be stated for posterity's sake here on this show.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:27:22] Congratulations.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:27:23] Congrats.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:27:23] I love the fact that the first time I encountered your conference on another podcasts, one of the things that made me really happy is the fact that this was not New York or San Francisco Bay area. It was somewhere else, and I love the fact that that's where the VoiceFirst.FM is born and expanding. So congratulations Bradley. Well done.

 

Bradley Metrock: [02:27:38] I appreciate that.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:27:38] Yeah, congratulations Bradley. And you have a 10 billion gigawatt transmitter that for the voice-first revolution at VoiceFirst.FM and the Alexa Conferences and I think other conferences are going to wind up being a textbook study of how this whole revolution got off and it's really, really good to see this taking place. Congratulations.

 

Bradley Metrock: [02:27:57] I appreciate you. We're pretty excited. So this is the first time that we've got a story that will just sort of be noted for the record, it will not be the last, and we'll move onto the last story of this week, which is that Amazon is moving to disrupt food marketplaces by marrying Alexa with food delivery. And I want to pull this up. So I had never heard of Blue Apron. It looks like I will never have a reason to learn what Blue Apron was. As Amazon now is delivering meals, and I don't know if they're doing this in Nashville or not, although I need to find out. But it's a fascinating story here on GeekWire about how Amazon is getting into food and these quick meals that can be prepared. Really interesting story. Karen, for our final story of the week I'm going to start with you. What do you take away from this? How does this story strike you?

 

Karen Kaushansky: [02:28:48] It goes to using your voice with Alexa to order a pizza. Right? It's going to be the on-demand, "Hey Alexa, what's for dinner?" That's what's going to be. Alexa will be able to tell you what meal kits are in the Amazon van parked three blocks away and you're going to get a meal kit, because you want to make dinner, you just don't have the groceries. It's all coming. It makes sense, especially with Amazon buying Whole Foods. They have a distribution now. It's all coming together.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:29:14] Farfield voice is a way to enable me to engage with the world without having to look at something and tap on something and do this and that and disrupt my flow and go to this very dangerous thing called the smartphone that will suck me into texting or the browser and so forth. For me, voice was a way to liberate us from screens, and now, it just occurred to me when I read the story that perhaps voice-first is going to, in fact, enable us, or in fact, we're going to exacerbate us being in front of the screen. So now I don't have to cook, meaning I don't have to shut my laptop down and go to the kitchen and cook and be off the screen machine for at least an hour. Now I'm can just say, "Alexa, get me something. And as I'm saying this, my eyes and my hands are not disrupted, meaning my eyes are still on the screen. My hands are still on the keyboard. So that struck me as ironic in a way that perhaps voice-first farfield, because it's not disruptive. It's not going to disrupt our looking at the phone or looking at the screen. And I just want to throw that bomb on you guys to see what kind of reaction I get.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:30:12] Well, it's a big bomb. Ahmed, let me say this. I think that the idea of having the ability to take over the kitchen is....Alexa, I mean that's obviously the secret agenda here. The idea of having that is a great opportunity for Amazon. It's also a great opportunity for families. I can tell you that what Alexa has done in our household is it's actually drawn the children to be more communicative to actually be more pleasant. My children will say thank you to Alexa, will interact and there is less screen time. And it is hard. Listen, I think anybody who has got a child right now is suffering from trying to get them away from the screens. It's actually served that function very well. And I got to see this. Echo Show has drawn the family together by allowing Grandma and the kids to have dinner together even though they're not in the same place, because we have two Echos in the kitchen. To actually have trivia questions being thrown out while Grandma is on the Echo Show and the kids are asking trivia, and Grandma's saying, "Oh yeah, I got the answer." There's nothing like that. I'm fortunate enough to have my mom come over sometimes, but this is so powerful. So this is a great move to have food delivery also. I'd like to see people make food. But the next thing is sit in your kitchen and eat it and maybe interact together.

 

Karen Kaushansky: [02:31:24] Yeah, I have a five-year-old as well, so it's on-demand dance parties, and "Open the Magic Door" is a pretty cool one that we've been using.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:31:32] I agree. I love that capability.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:31:33] I think the point I was trying to make is simply that technology is so complex that any any sort of straightforward line extrapolation that we make is probably naive. And so we have to assess it....all of us as we engage with these powerful technologies and see how they affect our lives. And I think the more powerful these technologies are, the more important it is for us as parents, as people who want to live a healthy life, to be willful and to be conscious of the tools that we have at our disposal and to maybe to focus on making sure we do the right thing by ourselves and our family and our children. And hopefully, mature as consumers of these powerful technologies.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:32:12] I've got to agree. I'm also on that theme that you've really brought about even in your earliest words, your early books, is this idea of humanizing technology. I think this is the evolution of this technology, and that's what's causing the revolution, is that we are rejecting technology in our lives 24/7 all the time. We really want to bring back the elements of humanity. And this is the beginning of that. Now I got to say, I've used Blue Apron before, I've used other food packaging systems before, and they're all pretty interesting. But again, there's something that themes this altogether. When I do these things, it becomes a family event. There's something about having a kit delivered and assigning different capabilities to the kids. It is brilliant. It's beautiful. And if there's any way that Alexa and Amazon can bring that about more, and more families actually sit down and not only just eat together, but prepare meals together. This is our ancient humanity crying out to us. It's how we've always normalized our relationships within our families.

 

Brian Roemmele: And I can go on for days about the psychology that's necessary for us to to make our food together, actually to gather our food together, and then to prepare it. I mean the gathering, that part is painfully lost, but the preparing....I am not going to say it's a panacea that's going to fix families, but it's a good way to start. It's a good way for you to reconnect with your kids instead of saying, "Hey, what did you do today?" There is a serendipitous moment of where a child might say, "Oh yeah, we did this in class and in these conversations, I see in real time, and I got to tell you take snapshots of that as a parent, you will never get those moments again, and find moments to make those moments. And I think bringing it all back, Alexa can do that. Home food delivery can do that. If you can do it from scratch, do from scratch of course but better yet, just spend those times together in the kitchen. That's what it's all about.

 

Bradley Metrock: [02:33:59] That's great. That's a great insight across the board. And as noted in episode five of the Voice-First Roundtable which is out today as well, interview with Nandini Stocker of Google. One thing that she and I talked about that just enthralls me with this voice technology sector is that it seems like almost to a person, every participant, every person that's involved in this technological movement, and it definitely is a movement is interested primarily in reducing involvement with technology. That's the primary ROI of voice technology, it seems like, to reduce impact, reduce time involvement, reduce headaches and stress and so on and so forth. Of technology, I think that is really interesting, and it's something that continues to draw me deeper into this vortex and I'm sure you all feel the same way. Karen, Brian, Ahmed, thank you very much for sharing your time and your insights and your expertise with us this week.

 

Ahmed Bouzid: [02:34:56] Thank you.

 

Brian Roemmele: [02:34:56] Thank you so much. An honor to be here.

 

Karen Kaushansky: [02:34:57] Thanks.

 

Bradley Metrock: [02:34:57] Greatly appreciated. And so for This Week in Voice episode 3, July 20th 2017, thank you for listening. And until next time.