JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Welcome to "Assistant on Air,"
where we have conversations with people
who build for Google Assistant.
I'm Jessica, and I'll be your host today.
I'm a developer advocate for Actions on Google,
and today, we'll be chatting with Martin,
who is a Google Developer Expert for Google Assistant.
And we'll be chatting about the Global Voice Hackathon.
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Martin, thank you so much for joining us.
MARTIN KRCEK: Yeah, thank you.
Thank you for invitation.
Thank you.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: So, Martin,
tell me a little bit more about you.
MARTIN KRCEK: I'm GDE.
I am also part of Google Developers Group,
so I love to work with the community of developers
and people who like Google technologies.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That's amazing.
What else do you do?
Because I hear that you have a love for conversation type
of things.
MARTIN KRCEK: Yeah, that's right.
I do actually two parts.
I'm helping startups together with Google Launchpad
because I'm a mentor for that, so growing some startups.
And I love artificial intelligence and conversation,
et cetera.
So I started three years ago with chatbots.
And two or three years ago, I moved
to voice because voice is more human and more
natural to talk to machines.
So I started with Google Assistant.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Oh, fantastic.
I definitely agree with you when it comes to--
it's more natural.
I know, myself, if I'm talking to you,
it makes it-- it's a lot easier versus if I'm trying to type
and trying to communicate that way.
MARTIN KRCEK: Absolutely, and I see, from the history,
that you use keyboard, mouse, typing,
and now you can communicate with voice.
And not only to talk also.
It's look like a human because you can ask something,
and you get an answer.
And I love it that there are technology
so far that you can create your own applications
and create your own virtual assistant.
That's amazing.
That's great, yeah.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: When it comes
to Google Assistant and voice and building for that,
I've heard that you were very inspired,
and you did something that we haven't seen in the voice
space in regards to our GDEs, where you organized
a fairly large hackathon.
So can you tell me more about that?
MARTIN KRCEK: Yes.
The first idea was in May this year,
that we did a local hackathon in my city, and--
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Where is your city?
MARTIN KRCEK: I'm from the Czech Republic,
and the city is Brno, and in the same city is
a company who's selling tickets, one of the largest--
[INAUDIBLE]
And we created a travel voice hackathon,
and it was amazing because it was 60 people there,
and we were really hacking for 24 hours.
Amazing.
And then I said, but I'm also in connection
with other organizers from GDG, so maybe I
can ask them to do the same thing, but in the global view.
So I talked to several GDG, I found them
through several channels.
I talked to Google.
People to do something like promotions for that,
to share the information on the social media.
At the beginning, I got four cities, then 10 cities,
then 20 cities.
And at the end, we got 85 cities around the world,
and it was amazing.
I didn't expect it.
Actually, probably no one expected that because--
yes, yes, it was 85 cities.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That's amazing,
and it all started with just, why don't we
just ask other people if they want to do this,
and if they're interested in it?
MARTIN KRCEK: This is absolutely different because you are not
fighting for huge money or to get
amazing prizes, because the technology is here,
and it's fun to do, fun to play with it.
And I said, if we enjoy that in my country,
so people around the world will do the same.
And the feedback is absolutely the same.
People love to go there.
They get training, what is voice?
What is conversation design?
How to write the code?
And it's super easy.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Oh, wait, so for your hackathon,
you train them right before then.
Is that what happened?
Or how-- because I'm sure voice is very different than GUIs
and mobile [INAUDIBLE].
So how did you prepare them for the hackathon?
MARTIN KRCEK: It was really new for most of the people.
They were very good developers doing coding for, I don't know,
20 years, but the voice is something really new for them.
So I ask the people, the other organizers,
can you do the little bit training to them?
Because it's totally new.
So when the hackathon start, for example, I was personally
in London, and we got a presentation
about what's voice, then how to create a conversation design,
how it's different from the typing and other UI experience.
And then how it's easy to create services
like [INAUDIBLE] and Google to use JavaScript, and then
say, oh, wow, I know how to do it, and now, let's
create some ideas.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: So let's say
someone's out there listening to us talk,
and they're like, you know, Martin,
this whole hackathon thing and everything you're talking about
sounds great, and I want to do something like that.
How do I start?
How can someone get involved in the community
and be able to do something like this?
MARTIN KRCEK: Yeah--
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: What type of resources
would one need?
MARTIN KRCEK: We still have the website
called voicehackathon.org.
So you can go there.
And you will see that there's a Question and Answers forms you
have to fill out, et cetera.
So if you want to create your own hackathon anytime,
you can go there, and you will see the structure.
You can see the final project.
A lot of resources are there.
Also there's a contact to meet, so you can connect me anytime.
And also, I plan to do it, as I said, for the next year,
so there will be another GDGs who
will be happy to help with the local activities.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That's fantastic.
So then they could-- people should just
stay tuned to see what happens.
MARTIN KRCEK: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Thank you so much, Martin,
for coming here and just sharing all your knowledge,
and hopefully inspiring other people
to do more hackathons like what you did.
So thank you.
MARTIN KRCEK: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Thank you for interview.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Well, we
hope that you enjoy today's episode.
And if you want to hear the full interview,
check out "Assistant on Air" podcasts
on your favorite podcast platform.
Follow us on Twitter for updates and new episodes.
I'm Jessica.
Chat with you next time.
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