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Wake Up: The Truth About Alexa

Wake Up: The Truth About Alexa

By Lauren Johnson

Both true personal stories & professional field experts worldwide sharing the impact that the Alexa wake word has had. Fields include technology, education, psychology, and more. Young children, teens, and women experiencing severe bullying, sexual harassment, name changes, suicidal ideation, and identity erasure. We will discuss corporate ethics and responsibility, name bombardment, and the choice to use a human name for technology.
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Currently playing episode

Episode 12 with Bradley Metrock CEO of Project Voice

Wake Up: The Truth About Alexa Mar 21, 2022

00:00
33:50
Special Episode 14: Alexa Ard of the Washington Post at Project Voice 2022

Special Episode 14: Alexa Ard of the Washington Post at Project Voice 2022

Special Episode: Alexa Ard of the Washington Post presents her story https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2021/people-named-alexa-name-change-amazon/?itid=ap_alexajulianaard  with a panel discussion moderated by Bradley Metrock.   https://www.iamalexa.org https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/alexa-can-i-have-my-name-back/ #womenhelpingwomen #alexa #amazon #amazoncanwehaveournameback 
Jul 07, 202247:32
Episode 12 with Bradley Metrock CEO of Project Voice

Episode 12 with Bradley Metrock CEO of Project Voice

Bradley Metrock is CEO of Project Voice, a media and consulting company, and General Partner of Project Voice Capital Partners, a $20M venture capital fund investing in early-stage voice/AI startups. Project Voice 2022 takes place April 25-28 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Mar 21, 202233:50
Episode 11 : Joshua Montgomery - Founder of Mycroft AI

Episode 11 : Joshua Montgomery - Founder of Mycroft AI

Episode 11 with Joshua Montgomery, Founder of Mycroft AI, the world's largest leading open source voice assistant One of the few entrepreneurs in the United States to build a gigabit fiber network from scratch, Joshua brings more than 15 years of entrepreneurial experience to the Mycroft project. Joshua’s previous project, Wicked Broadband, has been featured in Wired, ArsTechnica, and Forbes. He is a firm supporter of the open source movement and committed to an open future for AI.
Dec 21, 202132:15
Episode 10: Shyamala Prayaga

Episode 10: Shyamala Prayaga

As a product manager for the Autonomous Digital Assistant, Shyamala currently leads the company-wide Ford's Autonomous Digital Assistant innovation for voice and chatbots by owning the roadmap and overall vision and working with cross-functional teams to bring that vision to reality. She is a self-driven evangelist for UX and voice technology and recognizes the societal and cultural benefits of voice tech evolution. She possesses the insight and knowledge that comes with experience and leadership from her technical, development, and design roles. Her design and research work is presented nationally and internationally to general and field-specific audiences, and she has 18 years of experience designing for mobile, web, desktop, and smart TV interfaces. Shyamala has more than six years of experience designing voice interfaces for Connected Home Experience, Automotive, and Wearables. Publications: Her work on research into usability, accessibility, speech recognition, multimodal voice user interfaces, and user interfaces for research and educational use cases has been published internationally, and her interviews have been published with several magazines and podcasts, including Forbes, the healthy code, Automotive, and TU-Auto magazines.
Nov 29, 202140:15
Episode 9: Alexa W.

Episode 9: Alexa W.

Episode 9 with Alexa W.   
Nov 19, 202101:04:56
Episode 8: The Voice Spark Live Team Nick Sawka and Emily Banzhaf

Episode 8: The Voice Spark Live Team Nick Sawka and Emily Banzhaf

Team from Voice Spark Live - Nick Sawka, Emily Banzhaf About Emily Emily is a conversation designer, voice designer, one of the hosts of Voice Spark Live, and a member of the Open Voice Network, working to develop standards and ethical guidelines for voice experiences. She was part of the winning team of the Digital Assistant Academy's Hackabot. Before transitioning to the voice field, Emily was a professional violinist, performing all over the world with various ensembles. About Nick  Nicholas was recently brought on at Wanderword as their Chief Evangelist. Nick will represent Wanderword in the US in sales, networking, gathering product testers as well as improving the use/onboarding of Fabula, Poptale and entertainment production. Nick found his passion for Alexa back in 2015 when she was first released and was part of the initial Beta program for the device. In 2017 he made the jump to development and has been involved with creating over 400 Alexa Skills. Further, Nicholas has experience with working on and creating Google Actions. In addition to his love for Voice First tech he is an experienced Chief Of Operations with a demonstrated history of working in the military industry, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from University of Phoenix.
Oct 31, 202134:40
Episode 7: A Mother's Voice

Episode 7: A Mother's Voice

A must listen: One family's story of how the Alexa wake word turned their world upside down. Warning may be sensitive content for a younger audience
Oct 19, 202128:06
Episode 6: Alexa M

Episode 6: Alexa M

Alexa M shares her experience living with the name Alexa as an adult 
Oct 10, 202126:60
Episode 5 BBC NEWS

Episode 5 BBC NEWS

A unique podcast episode with Jeremy Vine and Tim Johns of the BBC! (with permisson)
Aug 09, 202120:53
Episode 4 - Maggie "We'll let Amazon keep it"

Episode 4 - Maggie "We'll let Amazon keep it"

Maggie (USA) is the mother of a young daughter formally known as Alexa.   A family's heartbreaking decision to change their child's name as a result of the Amazon wake word Alexa.   "At 2, she was done.  We'll let Amazon keep it." 
Jul 13, 202114:48
Episode 1 - Intro

Episode 1 - Intro

Episode 1 - Intro with Daniel Hill of Daniel Hill Media and host of Instagram Stories interviews Lauren Johnson, Founder of Alexa is a Human
Jun 30, 202116:33
Episode 3 - Julie Davis Daniels

Episode 3 - Julie Davis Daniels

Episode 3 - Julie Davis Daniels of the Voice in Education podcast.  Julie is an instructional technologist helping educators see the value in adding technology into the educational environment.  
Jun 30, 202122:04
Episode 2 - Why we changed our daughter's name

Episode 2 - Why we changed our daughter's name

True personal story of a family who made the difficult decision to change their young child's name.  Michelle is both and educator and parent living in the U.K.
Jun 30, 202123:37