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Katie McMahon
VP & GM
SoundHound
A mobile tech industry pioneer, SoundHound Inc. VP & GM Katie McMahon has been at the forefront of working with emerging technologies that change the way people interact with connected devices. She drove the global, mass-market adoption of mobile music recognition during the rise of the touchscreen interface era (smartphones) and is currently part of the executive team at SoundHound Inc. helping to shape the voice-interface era. McMahon works cross-functionally across business, marketing, product and engineering teams, helping to drive growth of SoundHound’s Voice AI platform - the Houndify platform - which enables natural, conversational voice interfaces for the connected devices and services. Prior to joining SoundHound, Katie was Vice President of Business Development at Shazam, where she drove the early smartphone mobile strategy, international product distribution and strategic partnerships.

Bret Kinsella
Founder and CEO
Voicebot.ai
Bret Kinsella is CEO and founder of Voicebot.ai, the leading source of research, data, analysis, and news related to the voice and AI industries. Bret was named commentator of the year by the Alexa Conference in 2019 and speaks frequently on voice and AI technologies in the U.S. and Europe. Earlier in his career, Bret served as CMO of both XAPPmedia and Kit Check, COO of ODIN Technologies, and held executive roles at Accenture, Sapient, and Harris. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the Anderson School at UCLA.

Noelle LaCharite
Principal PM Manager for Microsoft Search, Assistant & Intelligence
Microsoft
Noelle LaCharite is an evangelist at heart and is passionate about Mindful Leadership, work-life harmony and empowering people achieve their potential through technology. She also specializes in helping brands develop skills for Amazon Alexa. She is a strategic advisor to many AI and voice development companies globally. She has spent many years as a trainer, architect, and evangelist for IBM, RedHat, EMC, Amazon and now Microsoft. She has taught thousands of people the value and importance of Conversational AI, voice technology, Democratizing AI, and mindful leadership and has delivered keynotes, workshops and conferences around the world.

Max Amordeluso
EU Lead Evangelist
Amazon Alexa
Max Amordeluso is the Lead Evangelist for Amazon Alexa in Europe. His main mission is to introduce Alexa to European developers, and demonstrate how they can build natural and delightful voice experiences for customers. Max has held several technical leadership roles during a career spanning over 15 years—prior to his current role he led the teams that brought Alexa Skills Kit to United Kingdom and Germany, and spent the previous two years leading the Solutions Architects team for Amazon Web Services in Europe. Max is passionate about topics including Human Computer Interaction, the Internet of Things and the materialization of science fiction predictions.

Patricia Scanlon
Founder & CEO
Soapbox Labs
With over 20 years of experience in artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology, Dr. Patricia Scanlon has spent the majority of her career working on the commercialisation of research innovations. Scanlon holds a Ph.D. in Speech Recognition technology and Machine Learning systems and has held positions with Columbia University in New York, IBM T.J. Watson Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin and Nokia Bell Labs. Currently founder and CEO of SoapBox Labs, building voice technology for kids, which has raised over €3 million in funding to date including a highly competitive EU H2020 Innovation grant.

Dirk Songür
Studio Head, Mixed Reality
Microsoft
Managing the Microsoft Mixed Reality Studio in Berlin. Dirk’s and his team’s aim is to help create world-class Mixed Reality experiences together with our clients and partners. We believe that Mixed Reality is the next big step in how people experience the world and we want to help customers discover and ship new kinds of experiences in this field.

Emily Ross
Founder
Inkvine
Emily Ross is a business strategist, marketing lecturer and startup mentor. She is founder of Inkvine, an international growth partner for award-winning technology firms such as Artomatix, Nutritics and Nova Leah. She co-founded SportsTech Ireland in 2017 to help position Ireland as a leading destination for sports innovation and investment. As Director of a leading B2B agency, she helped EI funded tech firms to grow and scale. While leading Corporate Partnerships with UNICEF Ireland, she managed strategic campaigns with Total Produce, IKEA, Aer Lingus and P&G. She has written for Image Magazine and the Gloss, and lectured for LIT and Irish Times Training. She is an advisory board member for SXSW Pitch 2020. In her spare time, she coaches women’s rowing.

Conall Laverty
Founder & CEO
Wia
Wia is a leading cloud platform for software developers building Internet of Things applications. Wia provides a simple way for people and things to talk to each other with just a few lines of code. The platform is now being used by developers in more than 85 countries and has attracted €1m in venture capital funding with backers including Suir Valley Ventures, Enterprise Ireland and NDRC. He is a key figure in the Irish Internet of Things ecosystem. Previously Conall was CTO of Big Motive, a creative technology company based in London and Belfast. There he architected and developed products for BBC, Net-a-Porter and Channel 4. He was also Technical Director of Woogie, an innovation consultancy who has worked with Cambridge Silicon Radio, Deezer and startups throughout Ireland. He attained a First Class Honours Masters from Queen’s University Belfast in Computer Games Development. Speaker engagements include Mobile World Congress, Dublin Tech Summit, RIOT, Web Summit, TechConnect, ICONs Festival. Publications include TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance, Irish Times, Fora, Silicon Republic, Sunday Business Post, Business World
Katy Bass
Founder & CEO
Altavox

Stephen Mailey
Senior Interaction Designer
Stephen has around 20 years experience leading the design of major deployments in smart, data-driven voice user interfaces and multi-modal conversational interactions. He’s currently a design lead at Google where he leads designs of core features for the Google Assistant. Prior to joining Google, Stephen was Head of User Experience at an international agency delivering award winning voice, text, and multi-modal interactions into major brands, including Nike, Walgreens, United Health Group, and more. Stephen is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Imperial College London, and Cambridge University.
Claire Houston
Software Engineer
Kainos
Working primarily in AI & Machine Learning. Claire is a core member of the Artificial Intelligence Capability and has been exploring the use of Chatbots and NLP to change how customers interact with services.
Dustin Coates
Voice Search Lead
Algolia
Dustin is Voice Search Lead at Algolia and author of Voice Applications for Alexa and Google Assistant (Manning Publications). He is also the co-host of the VUX World podcast, where he has the opportunity to speak with voice builders about what they've learned building on new platforms with new experiences. A proud Texan, he lives in Paris.
Ralph Drewnowski
User Experience Explorer & Designer
Kainos
Ralph is passionate about inclusive design and building services accessible for everybody, regardless of their abilities. Having worked with governments in Poland and United Kingdom, he’s advocating for complex systems to work in favour of humans, not the other way round. He’s a fan of industrial revolution and steampunk.

Charlotte Breen
IT Security and Data Specialist
Breen Consulting
Working where text, people and software meet . She researched and designed the core Data Loss Prevention rules and policies for RSA/EMC. She developed DLP Security Incident Analysis and Escalation rules and policies for Synopsys. She works at the level of what this legislation means for your data, combined with that software. Originally coming to the field from Librarianship, Charlotte has developed taxonomies, classification system, EDRMS, provided training in Advanced Information Management, worked with multinationals across verticals, and with government departments across the EU. With 20 years of data project experience, she’s highly experienced at spotting what will go wrong next.
Connor Cirillo
Global Conversational Marketing Manager (Chatbots & Messaging)
Hubspot
Connor is HubSpot's first conversational marketing manager. In this role, he makes it easier for prospects to build relationships throughout marketing, sales, and service. This includes designing conversations, building experiences, and optimizing programs over time.
Stephen Redmond
CIO Enterprise Insight Studio Lead
Accenture
Based at The Dock in Dublin, Stephen delivers AI solutions for internal teams. He has extensive experience with AI and Machine Learning, Big Data, Graph Databases, Digital Assistants, Advanced Analytics, Data Visualisation, Architecture and Project Management.With over twenty years’ experience delivering data and analytics projects both in the public and private sectors, he frequently presents on data topics to a mix of business and technical audiences. He also lectures part-time on data analytics at the National College of Ireland. Stephen is a published author and has a global reputation, including been recognised as a Qlik Luminary (2014 through 2019).

Cormac O'Neill
CEO
Webio
CEO of 'The Conversational Middleware Company' he is passionate about bringing conversational messaging and voice-first technology to the entreprise and enabling them to use the power of AI to automate conversations via autonomous smart chatbots or blended live agent engagement. Applying Machine Learning, NLP and Webio’s Propensity Indicator X to deliver optimal customer conversation outcomes. He brings to the table over 20 years’ management experience within the telecommunications, retail, financial services and travel sectors, particularly in implementing operational best practices and budget control systems.
David Curran
OpenJaw Technologies
Machine Learning Engineer
Grant Ronald
Director of Product Management
Oracle

Paul Sweeney
EVP Product
Webio
Paul leads Webio’s Product Vision. He has over 20 years’ experience in research, new venture development, venture capital and outsourcing across the telecoms, Internet and technology sectors. . He is a founder of Convercon.
Jonathan Mckenzie
Senior Product Manager, AI, Self Service & Automation
Genesys
Mayank Gandhi
Data Scientist
Webio
David Low
Executive Product Manager
BBC
Christopher O'Hagan
AI Engineer
Kainos
EdgeTier provides analytics products to customer contact centres. EdgeTier's latest product is "Arthur" uses the latest technology in AL and NLP, developed in-house by the EdgeTier team. Prior to their work at EdgeTier, Shane and the team developed a consumer-facing price comparison application in Ireland, which has since been integrated with the website of the Commission for Communications Regulation. Previously, Shane worked as a data science consultant with Deloitte Analytics in Dublin, providing analytics solutions to clients across multiple sectors in Ireland.
Dave Hearne
Senior UX Designer & Front End Developer
TSSG
Stephen Barnes
Senior Software Engineer
TSSG

Benjamin Cowan
Assistant Professor
UCD School of Information & Communication Studies
Benjamin is an ADAPT funded investigator researching the user experience of speech and language technologies. His research is at the juncture of psychology and computer science focusing on how design causally affects user perceptions and behaviour, with particular focus on user habits and and speech based interactions