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 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.

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.

Gavin has 20 years’ experience in consumer product design, leading projects and teams at Amazon, HP and Microsoft. Most recently Gavin is one of the founding leaders in Alexa Voice Service, which provides reference designs as well as development tools and services for OEMs building Alexa into their products. Prior to Alexa, Gavin has worked on smartphone product development in Silicon Valley since 2003 working alongside the founders of Android. Gavin is excited the potential for voice forward products to reduce or eliminate barriers to technology adoption, particularly in the area of independent living for people with disabilities. Gavin has a MSEE degree from the University of York and has completed post-graduate studies at Stanford University, California.

Prior to joining SoapBox, Niamh was the founder and CEO of TechIreland, a not for profit that tracks and showcases all innovation in Ireland. Prior to TechIreland Niamh was Dublin’s first Commissioner for Startups where she developed a platform, an image and a voice for Dublin as a great tech city. Niamh founded the Dublin Globe publication, the #1stFridayBrekkie, and Mentoring for Scale, a monthly mentoring event for scaling companies. Niamh has been in the technology business for over two decades and spent 16 years in NYC where she built two startups (TechResources and Idirus) and became a mentor and angel investor at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator - ERANYC. Her first company Pan Research was founded in Dublin in 1996. Niamh is on the board of FoodCloud and CoderDojo.

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.

Gillian builds applications using Cognitive and Serverless Technologies, and is fascinated by how both of those are changing the paradigms around Human-Computer Interaction. She has a particular interest in Conversational AI as it sits at the intersection of Technology, Psychology, Linguistics and Philosophy.

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.

Michael is a conversation designer at Google. He leads the design of voice-, touch-, and type-based interactions for the Google Assistant and generally acts as a conversation design evangelist. Previously, he worked for more than 10 years as an operatic vocal coach, and he credits that experience with his sensitive ear for prosody. A hyperpolyglot, Michael has studied music and language in Japan, Costa Rica, China, Austria, and Switzerland and holds degrees in Linguistics and East Asian Studies from Harvard University.

Entrepreneurial digital media leader who has built and managed high performing teams, DTC Sport, News & Entertainment products and content businesses in global roles at RTÉ, Ireland’s Public Service Media, and Universal McCann, New York. She led the team that developed, built and ran Football and Hurling pay-per-game streaming service GAAGO, RTÉ Player, RTÉ.ie and RTÉ NewsNow – a portfolio of brands used by customers in 200+ countries. Múirne is driven by leveraging business and creative implications of new technologies, evolving consumer behaviour and emerging platform economics, She set up LaffanLABs as a platform for her to work with content creators, publishers and start-ups on developing new product propositions and building direct connections with consumers. Múirne has a demonstrated track record of thought leadership with inclusion in CDO Club’s Top 50 Global Influencers, Ad Age Media Innovators, Top 50 Women in STEM and Sport, and founding Chair of European Broadcasting Union digital committee

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.

Christine specializes in leveraging Conversational AI to improve the employee experience by making the work day easier.

Exec. Product Manager for the BBC, Ed has 15 years experience in broadcast technology as a developer and product manager. Now working with the Voice + AI team to build a platform for the BBC Assistant and beyond....

Nick Trogh is the DevRel lead for Belgium and Luxembourg within the Microsoft WE HQ. He’s engaging with professional developers to guide them on the path towards Azure ninja status. His main technology focus is on Cloud, AI and conversational interfaces. You can also find him as a speaker at conferences or meetups, or any place where you find tech enthusiasts. Feel free to reach out to him on Twitter. Prior to joining Microsoft over a decade ago, Nick has been working as a software architect at different IT consulting firms, covering a wide range of Microsoft and other technologies and platforms.