Voice In Canada Flash Briefing #696

Hello and welcome to the flash briefing. It is the first day of Crack the Code and I am so excited to share this contest with you.

Today, this last briefing is going to be a little bit longer than normal and I apologize for that.

Normally I do try to keep my flash briefings approximately two minutes, but I do have a fair bit of information to get through about how this game works and how you can win your prizes.

So please bear with me, I promise the flash briefings are not normally this long.

First of all, I want to say a big thank you to the listeners for sticking with me and being a part of our community since the very beginning of this flash briefing.

Thanks to you, thanks for the support, thanks for the reviews, thanks for the comments.

It humbles me very much to say that this flash briefing has been the number one flash briefing and news skill in Canada since the very beginning, so thank you so much.

This would not be possible without every single one of you, so thanks and this is one of the ways that I want to give back to you.

As you may know, approximately six months ago when I hit the 500th recorded episode of this flash briefing, I wanted to do something creative, I wanted to do something new.

I wanted to take flash briefings to the next level and that was when I launched the very first edition of Crack the Code, the gamified flash briefing.

Where you could listen to the flash briefing, figure out the answers to the riddles in each episode, talk to the skill, Crack the Code and then collect puzzle pieces to eventually finally crack the final code and win prizes and the idea is exactly the same now.

I have taken the feedback from you from the community and I have improved the game.

This game is going to be 10 days long, just a little bit shorter than the last time when it was two weeks, but every single day for the next 10 days starting today, there will be some type of clue that you can listen for and if you can solve it, you then go to Alexa.

You say, “Alexa open, Crack the Code” and you talk to Alexa and you see if you can get the right answer to that riddle.

If you can Alexa’s going to give you a secret piece of the final code.

And if you can collect the 10 pieces to that code and then go back to that skill and tell Alexa that final secret code, you’re in the running for close to $3,000 worth of prizes.

This is going to be a lot of fun. Now before I go any further, I do want to recognize those that have donated prizes for this because again, it wouldn’t be possible without them as well.

And a lot of companies, a lot of organizations have really stepped up and so I just have to take a moment and tell you a little about the prizes and who is donating each one of these prizes.

And obviously I can’t thank these companies and organizations enough. Let’s start off right off the bat here.

So first of all from Trinity audio, Trinity audio is a fantastic company. They allow you to audiofy your website and it makes it very, very easy to turn blog posts into the spoken word.

They have generously donated an Echo Show 5 for the grand prize.

Treble, Treble is again, an amazing company, they connect creators and listeners so that if you are creating audio content and you want to get it out to an audience, Treble is one of the best ways to do this.

They are putting a lot of effort into making that bridge between the listeners and the creators, so definitely check out treble.

And Treble has generously donated an Echo Show 8 as well to the grand prize winner.

On top of that Audio Burst, Audio Burst is another voice tech company and they allow for searchable audio snippets.

They take the audio snippets and for example a flash briefing and they can parse out the key terms and the keywords and then they can create customized playlists based on the actual content of the audio, very interesting and audio burst has donated an Echo Show.

This game is going to be 10 days long.

Crack the Code 2020 Clue #1

So the grand prize winner of this contest is going to get an Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 8 and the Echo Show, which is the original largest screen one, the 10 inch one, you get all three of them.

In addition to that, Pete Erickson from Motive and Voice Summit has donated a complete all access pass to Voice Summit 2020 which is taking place in Washington DC this year, October 5th to eighth 2020 and you will have complete access to everything that’s going on there if you are the grand prize winner.

Additionally, Bob Stolzberg from Voice XP, he has donated a premium account to his service Voice XP for one year, a one year license and this allows you to make Alexa skills very, very simply. It has been compared to the Craigslist of creating skills and in fact Crack the Code was made with the Voice XP platform and Bob was a huge help in creating that for me as well.

In terms of, you know, getting me up to speed and teaching me how to do it.

It’s actually very simple, I probably didn’t need them at all, no offense Bob, but it is a really, really simple voice platform that allows you to get your skills up in no time.

Additionally, I am donating my own consultation time so as you may know, I do have a complete flash briefing course called flash briefing formula, which is entirely free.

I do offer packages with consultation as well and I’m throwing in the gold package which includes three hours of consultation with me to get your own flash briefing off the ground, so it’s an absolute pleasure to be able to do that as well.

In addition, I am really, really excited and proud to announce that Amazon itself, the creators of Alexa are sponsoring this very contest.

They are behind this and they have thrown in participation prizes.

So, they have actually donated three Echo Show 5 devices and even if you don’t crack the final code just by entering the contest, you are in the running for the participation prize so you can still win that Echo show 5.

Even if you only play one day and you enter that you enter as a participant, you’re in the running for the Echo Show 5.

In addition, I’m stepping it up even more this time for Crack the Code 2020 there is a another bonus feature in this game this time around.

You don’t know when this will come up, but I will tell you this that I have enabled a new feature in the Voice XP platform and that allows for notifications.

If you choose, it’s totally optional. If you choose to enable notifications from Crack the Code on a particular day, you just might hint, hint, get a notification that on that day there is a special single code that if you can crack that code only for the people that enter on that day, they have the opportunity to win a prize just for that day.

So you might want to consider that as well. Now, all the details about this contest, lots of the stuff that I’ve talked about here, you can peruse that at your convenience on the website. AlexainCanada.ca/CrackedtheCode.

Now let’s talk about a question for you for today.

Let’s talk about maybe the first clue. When giving these clues I’m going to be going back and looking at some of the podcasts, thanking some of the prior guests, but also highlighting some of the key news events that occurred particularly over the last six months.

So today I want to bring you back to podcast, episode number 95 where I did a recap of all of the different products that were announced at the Amazon event.

There were a number of new Echo devices announced. Some of them are only available in the United States.

Some of them were made available immediately, both in Canada and the U.S and there was one device that was the newest device that was launched in Canada and the United States and it was the most expensive device that was launched in Canada in the past year.

So, if you think you might know what that is, then I encourage you to go and open, Crack the Code and have a little chat with Alexa, alright?

The first clue is out there, I hope you enjoy this game.

We got lots of great surprises and lots of fun coming your way over the next 10 days.

So enjoy and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Other Useful Resources

Listen on your Echo Device! Easy as 1-2-3!

Voice in Canada Skill Logo1. Open your Alexa app and click on the Menu button > Settings > Flash Briefing.
2. Click on “Add Content” and search for “Voice in Canada”.
3. Click on “Voice in Canada” and the Enable button.

Alexa, what are my flash briefings?

Alexa, what’s in the news?

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