In this episode, Teri welcomes Shawn Griffin, a developer and Alexa enthusiast. Teri and Shawn talk about programming for voice, Shawn’s foray into Alexa skills, and a very special upcoming event in Vancouver.

Welcome Shawn Griffin!

When you hear Shawn casually mention how he started fiddling with voice technology back in 1997, you are reminded, with a jolt, how nimbly voice technology has advanced and seeped into our lives. Shawn sheds light on voice technology’s humble beginnings when he recounts how, back then, he worked on a project that, though it may sound simple now, it was surely very ambitious for its time: a speech recognition auto-attendant. In fact, the product was enticing enough to push Shawn and his co-workers to jump ship and start their own voice-technology company. This proved to be a successful move: the company was later bought by Nuance, the company behind the Dragon speech recognition software. And that was that, at least for a while. After a break from voice technology, Shawn has now returned to working on voice technology again because he feels it’s finally advanced enough to have tremendous applications.

Can you tell us about your experience with voice?

Back in 1997, Shawn was working at Mitel, a PBX company, on their speech recognition group. He built a speech recognition auto-attendant, a tool which could put you through to the person you wanted to speak with by mentioning their name. Shawn says that he loved the technology so much that he and five colleagues decided to jump ship and they started their own company. They started working with Nuance, and eventually Nuance bought the company. Since then, Shawn has worked in various spaces. He decided to return to voice one year ago, primarily because of all the exciting things that are happening right now. Shawn says that he is impressed with what’s going on with Amazon’s and Google’s assistants. Shawn feels that, after a long time, speech is finally at the right place. Shawn says that it is the pervasive nature of the voice technology that makes it special. The fact that it’s around you and on all the time: you can ask it to do something and it does it. It’s natural and you don’t have to take out your phone. In the next five years, Shawn predicts, it will only get much more pervasive. He believes that phones are going to disappear; they’ll be something you put in your pocket and they will stay there. You’ll only take it out when you need to glance at something.

What does voice first mean to you?

Voice first is an easy way to get information and send information. Shawn thinks we are going to see a huge ramp-up of voice into all aspects of our lives today.

What particular areas of voice are you interested in?

Shawn started programming Alexa skills and now has built three, which are at different stages. The first one is a genealogy tree, a skill where you can revisit your entire family history by just asking questions like, “When was my great grandfather born?”

The second one is a physiotherapy app. Shawn created it after seeing how great Alexa is at following up and reminding people to do their exercises.

The third one is called “Command”. It’s an app that identifies and sends your location when issuing an emergency alert.

Can you talk about the new Vancouver Amazon Alexa Skills Meetup group you created?

Shawn says he first wanted to find a meetup group in Vancouver but there wasn’t one! So, he decided to start one! The Vancouver Amazon Alexa Skills Meetup Group is focused primarily on developers and people building skills for Alexa.

The first meetup will take place on Sept 24th from 6 to 9 pm at the Amazon Vancouver office at 510 W Georgia Street. I am honoured to be speaking at the first meetup! There will be opportunities to network and see some demos of some skills in development. We hope to see you there!

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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