Own The Conversation - Issue #52
Featured jobs from bot-jobs.com, Conversational AI news and Events
Welcome one and all.
I’m not sure about you, but this first working week of the year has been a little bit of a blur. Whether it’s because it was a short week for some, or because you haven’t quite yet worked out what day/week/year we are in, everybody seems to be going full-steam ahead this week.
I find that there’s mixed feelings about the year ahead already. We’ve already seen the first of the bif layoffs this year, so some are trepadacious about job security. Some are excited about the speed of interest in conversational technology that ChatGPT has created. Some are just getting on with business as usual.
I’ll borrow a paragraph from my friend, Hung Lee’s, newsletter, as it sums up how I am thinking about this all, perfectly.
“In these discombobulating times, I draw comfort from the lessons we learned over this period; to stay strong in community and network, to be agile with a small ‘a’, and train yourself to handle unexpected, unscheduled game changing interruptions, to apply ecosystem thinking and create the habit of thinking how you, as an individual, can contribute to its health. Helping others, after all, is a form of therapy and may be in the end the best way you can help yourself.”
If you think this newsletter would be valuable to your network, please feel free to share.
And if you are coming here off the back of a social share, or stumbled across it accidentally and think it’s something you need to be subscribed to (why wouldn’t you!?!) then feel free to subscribe here:
Without further ado, let’s move on to the juicy stuff!
Martyn
Conversational AI Jobs
This edition is all about jobs. Jobs jobs jobs.
Firstly, let’s talk about Conversational AI jobs. We’re having a clean out of some old and expired jobs so, while numbers of jobs on the site are down, the new ones being added are fresh and exciting. Hiring is still happening at full pace, so make sure that you sign up for alerts at Bot Jobs and keep up to date with the latest permanent roles in our space.
👉 Standard job postings are still free. But for a 50% discount on featured job postings on Bot Jobs, use discount code BOT50 when posting featured jobs - available for all Own The Conversation subscribers 👈
Featured Jobs on Bot Jobs
Freelance Technical Project Manager, Skilled Creative: US Remote
Our friends at Skilled Creative are hiring for a freelance (3-6 months with option of converting to full-time) Technical Project Manager. You’ll be the responsible person for ensuring the success of Conversational AI project builds (Alexa Skills, Voice Activated Websites, Voice Search Optimization, etc.). Cool job at one of the best businesses in our industry. SUBMIT YOUR BID HERE
Senior Software Developer, Scotty Technologies: Portugal (with options for remote)
Scotty Technologies, a fast-growing conversational AI start-up, is hiring! Scotty is their conversational AI platform that automatically handles, and services all customer contacts on the phone, in chat, email and in your apps, 24/7, and in any language. They are looking for a senior software developer with experience in Java and Kotlin as well as interpreted languages such as Groovy on top of Spring Framework. MORE INFO HERE
Senior NLP Chatbot Developer (German or French), EVA.AI: Remote Anywhere
EVA is an A to Z solution for searching and matching great talent to the best jobs in the company, helping them with screening, interviews, etc. They work with some big names, like the UN. They are looking for NLP Software Engineers (with French or German language) to work on dialogue modelling for French and German chatbots, entity extraction and recognition, training and modelling our proprietary neural network and so on. This position is fully remote, so you can work from anywhere. MORE INFO HERE
Bot Jobs Freelancers
Well, what can I say. I knew that this would be exciting for the community, but I couldn’t expect the massive take-up that Bot Jobs Freelancers has had. A lot of you are registering for freelance opportunities and using your profile there to build your portfolio. Lots of developments and improvements to come, so if you haven’t already registered and you are looking for freelance roles, then register today.
Conversations To Own
For those that are new to the newsletter, this is the part where I talk about some interesting news that has hit the Conversational AI community of the past week (or so).
ChatGPT
And I couldn’t really start this section without mentioning ChatGPT. This thing has created interest from everybody. Some love it, some hate it, some are indifferent. But what it has created is a real interest in conversational interfaces.
I’m not going to share much here, as there’s just too many articles, commentary etc. to even begin to curate. However, what I will share is this quite comprehensive guide to explaining exactly what ChatGPT is. It should help you help the muggles understand things a bit better.
Voiceflow AI Assist
For those of you who use Voiceflow in your conversational design tech stack, you may have seen that Braden Ream announced in a LinkedIn post the launch of Voiceflow’s new AI Assist. So, to summarise, what does this release cover:
Use AI to generate response variations
Use AI to generate utterances
Use AI to generate entities and synonyms
Use AI to generate no-matches & no-reply responses
AI Freestyle - have the Assistant take the conversation over and try to get it back on track when the user hits the fallback intent
It looks pretty cool, if I’m being honest.
Events to Attend: January - March
January
Botrepreneurs Online Networking
Jan 11, 2023
Online
Data Innovation Summit APAC
Jan 12, 2023
Singapore
Conversation Design Festival: Making AI Speak Human
Jan 24, 2023
Online
February
Enterprise AI Summit
Feb 8–9, 2023
Amsterdam, NL
World AI Cannes Festival
Feb 9–11, 2023
Cannes, FR
AI & Machine Learning in the Enterprise
Feb 21–22, 2023
Austin, TX
Botrepreneurs Beers & Bots - IRL Networking Event in London
Feb 23, 2023
London, UK
March
European Chatbot & Conversational AI Summit
Mar 15–16, 2023
Edinburgh, Scotland
Enterprise Connect
March 27–30, 2023
Orlando, FL
End Note
I didn’t make any actual new year’s resolutions, but as always, I’m hoping (and working towards) a healthy and successful year.
Anyway, if you want to add anything into next-week’s newsletter (events, news, articles) then feel free to DM me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or even TikTok
Here’s hoping you have a great week.
Martyn
