This summer, the team at Create My Voice has been Speaking, Sponsoring, and Volunteering at WordCamps.  WordCamps are organized in cities around the world and are where people get together to learn about topics related to WordPress.  WordPress is a content management system used to power about one-third of all of the websites on the internet.  For 2019, the Create My Voice team has been to WordCamps in Atlanta, Jacksonville, Boston, and Birmingham, we are on the way to Lehigh Valley in central PA.  and plan to attend WordCamp in New York, Philadelphia, Boise, and Seattle.  Regardless of the CMS that you use, Voice Technology is starting to impact how you engage with your audience.  The team at Create My Voice is providing education on how to prepare your brand for Voice Technology.  Topics include:

• The explosion of Voice Technology
• The Privacy versus Convenience debate
• The Difference between Traditional Branding and Verbal Branding, and
• What it means to own your Verbal Brand

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The H.E.A.V. BLOG Can Now Be Heard

A recent report regarding Smart Speaker adoption, stated that over 66 million people in the United States now own at least one smart speaker. Google and Amazon are making smart speakers, smarter, as they race to put them in every device that we own, and every room that we enter.

One of the things that make smart speakers appear smarter, is the ability to use different voices. With Google, you can change the default voice to an alternate one. And with Amazon smart speakers, you can use multiple voices. Using an alternate voice (or voices) can enhance the user's experience, and expand your audience.

In addition to changing voices, there are several other features to help you make your content sound, just right. These new features are referred to as SSML (or Speech Synthetic Markup Language). SSML is a markup language like HTML, that provides a way to enhance how your content sounds.

Let's look at a few examples of how SSML is used.

The following is from a presentation performed at Podfest Expo 2019.  It was part of the Pecha Kucha presentations where each presenter submits 20 slides which are automatically advanced every 15 seconds for a 5-minute presentation.   In this article, I will describe the slides (for those listening on your smart speaker).