We made it!!!
Nine events across the globe, all on the same day, bringing together people with one thing in common: an interest in Voice AI. Following the sun, it started in Melbourne and finished 20 hours later in San Francisco.
What made it special wasn't the number of cities or the distance between them. It was the WE: the people who came together across the world to make something unique happen.
9 cities. 3 continents. 900+ registrations. 200+ invitations. One community following the sun for 20 hours.
Social media version: https://voice-ai-space.link/global
THE ORIGIN
Every time we wrapped a Voice AI event last year, in city after city, people kept asking us the same thing: "when is the next one?". I always knew at some point we had to get people in various locations to allow the community to meet on a regular basis without compromising the agnostic and neutral ground we try to have.
Following a discussion with Miguel a month ago, the idea of a global meetup germinated… I reached out to people I’ve met over the last months, people I know and trust, and asked: would you be in?
Most said yes!!!
THE MAKING
Doing one event is not an easy task, it's like a voicebot… When you see it from the outside you're like "hey I can do it too !!!" True, but once you start working on it you realize there is way more work than it appears… For an event you need to pick the right venue, choose the food and drinks, plan the communication, get attendees, make sure that people who join will enjoy being together, find sponsors… Not that easy when you put all of this together.
We picked a "simple" format, a gathering to keep the on-the-day operations simple. Let's meet and chat already brings tons of value when the people who join share a common passion. We aimed to keep each gathering intimate, generally around 15 people per city, to allow really good networking and also to have a format where we could offer the food and drinks to everyone who joined.
We spent countless hours reviewing more than 900 registrations across the nine cities selecting the people we felt would get the most from meeting fellow Voice AI builders. In the end, we invited more than 200 people to join us around the world.
THE DAY
It all started in a wintery Melbourne at 6:30 (8:30 am UTC) hidden in a secret bar behind a vending machine !!! A super cool venue Mo and Chitrang picked.
Then a few hours later (13:00 UTC) Pranava and Priaansh, in a more formal but still super beautiful setting, started to welcome their guests who faced the rain to attend, the turnout in Bengaluru was amazing.
In a slick venue as Dubai has to offer Sriram started to welcome guests (14:30 UTC) while in Bengaluru attendees were still sharing a good meal.
Istanbul came after (16:00 UTC), in this city where Dilan had pulled the event together in less than a week, on a beautiful rooftop overlooking the city people all working with Voice technology joined and had hours to connect!
Half an hour after Istanbul started(16:30 UTC), Loris in a posh Parisian venue, started to welcome guests, with people traveling from as far as Lille to join. (We had the youngest ever Voice AI attendee there!).
In a pink and sexy setting (at 17:00 UTC) Marie Cécile and Davy welcomed their guests and started creating a friendly and fun atmosphere in Barcelona it was small room, good people, big smiles!
In London (17:30 UTC), where the first Voice AI Space event happened a bit more than a year ago, Evelyn and Sam made it happen on a super rooftop in the trendy Shoreditch area, it was really nice to see familiar faces joining and sharing a good time !
Came the time to cross the Atlantic and land in Toronto. Time for a little nap on my side, 15 minutes, like a sailor avoiding deep sleep… I kept an eye on the attendee list, answered emails, and read the first positive feedback.
At 22:30 UTC Miguel made the first Voice AI Space event in Toronto. Relax setting, long table central venue, it’s never an easy task to start but here too it all went smooth and people were apparently surprised to be offered food and drinks !
And finally a few hours later we landed in SF (01:30 UTC Aug 21). I have to admit that combining the lack of sleep with how important shipping an event in SF is for us, it was stressful, but Anusha and Manolo made it smooth. After a few hours of networking, drinks and food the sun left with the attendees and came to knock on my windows as it was 7am and something on my side…
For me the adrenaline rush lasted all the way, and the goosebumps happened at the launch of every city! From all the event I’ve been part of, this one was unique
Unique because it was an event spanning the globe, unique because it was an event dedicated to people working in the same field carefully selected, unique because that was the first time we did this format, and truly unique because it all happened thanks to a group of amazing people all over the globe who all said a few weeks back "let's do it" !
Voice technologies are creating new ways to connect humans and the machine, voice is the medium us humans have used to create civilization and communities, voice was a few days ago one of the reasons people all across the globe came together and honestly that's super cool !!!!!
In addition to the awesome people who made this possible, I believe the sponsors of this event also deserve to be named on this page. Massive thanks to Speechmatics, Twilio, and LiveKit, their trust and support made this possible. This event concept was a bit nuts, and they trusted us to make it happen, agreeing with a community-first principle: the rooms were not made for pitching a product, but for gathering the community.
THE LEARNINGS
There is a common saying "Alone you go faster, with others you go further", this event is a demonstration of it.
A “F*ck it let's do it” attitude has definitely played a big role in this. Like someone who creates a startup, if you overthink it, sometimes you simply don't do it, putting the rails in front of you while the train is already moving is stressful but damn, when you reach the station and look back at the ride it's overly cool and satisfying. So I would say "keep being nuts" is another learning.
It's overly frustrating to put a cap on the number of attendees but for networking events it's important, to allow everyone to have a good time, that's a really important feedback we had. We dealt with no shows too, which are painful, but hey… not much we can do about it.
Trust the people not the process… I've made a few playbooks on how to run events, going deep into details… Those are useful but the key to success has nothing to do with them, the secret of success is good people, good people and good people !
CONCLUSION
The first Global Voice AI Gathering was a huge success thanks to the people on the ground who made it happen, supported by some amazing companies.
And this is only the beginning.
We want to do it again, learn from this first edition, add a few more cities and keep giving more power to local communities through Voice AI Space Chapters.
The idea is simple: more cities, more people bringing the community together locally, all connected globally.
And on our side, we want to keep pushing things further, with more events around the world (and eventually a Voice AI Summit 🤓).
To close this first edition, the final words have to be…
Thank you, ಧನ್ಯವಾದಗಳು, شكراً, Teşekkürler, Merci, Gràcies to everyone who was part of it!!
Let’s do it again!!!!!
