EP165 - Amazon Alexa's David Isbitski David Isbitski (@thedavedev)is the Chief Evangelist for Alexa at Amazon. In this interview, we cover a wide range of topics including the growth of the Alexa platform, the evolution of the developer community, the future of voice, and voice commerce specifically. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 165 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday, February 22, 2019 from the eTail West tradeshow in Palm Desert, CA. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Friday February 22nd 2019 live from the etail West Trade Show here in not completely Sunny Palm Desert I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately Scott is trapped on an airplane so we are going to make a lot of fun of him and hopefully assign him some action items for after the show, long-time listen to the show will know that if we were to make a word cloud of everything that we’ve said in the hundred and seventy something episodes. Amazon would be the biggest word on that word cloud and Alexa would probably be third I think Star Wars might so I can let you be. David: [1:02] Well that’s good to hear. Jason: [1:03] Be ahead of Alexa, but obviously we talked about a lot on the show so I guess we’re super happy to have on this week’s show is Dave a bitsky who’s the chief of Vangelis for Alexa at Amazon welcome to the show. David: [1:17] Thanks for having me super happy to be here. Jason: [1:19] Yeah so I record a lot of these for my home studio and the first thing I have to do is mute all of my Alexa devices. David: [1:28] Oh yeah I’m the same way yeah in fact even when I’m on stage if I’m Kino to hear something when I say her name there’s still that thread that goes through my head waiting for a response. Jason: [1:42] Oh no it’s something going wrong. David: [1:43] Yeah yeah. Jason: [1:45] So David for a long time with some of the show we always like to start by getting just a little background about the the guests can you tell us a little bit about your backup. David: [1:52] Yeah sure I guess it depends on how far you want to go back. Jason: [1:57] I have your high school records of. David: [1:59] Yeah yeah exactly so I grew up in the 80s in Commodore and this this vision of how, science fiction and Technology was a future rights what do you mention Star Wars growing up on Star Wars and things like, the black hole right and Star Trek and all of that and I just, man I want to be a part of it and I remember speech technology TTS text-to-speech back then be able to do stuff like that I had to do that and. [2:29] I just I was like man when is this going to happen right and I started out any e-commerce 96-97 building. Commerce pipelines actually competing against Amazon was just getting started the time at this company called microwarehouse macwarehouse and then I did web whole rise of the web did want you to. Com Consulting did I, Enterprise gig in a large pharmaceutical company, and that was my me trying management and realized it wasn’t my cup of tea I just I love that I love being, I love traveling talking to people and using new technology which is right and around 2007, October to a Microsoft December roll to I have now there a lot of stuff around games and mobile and worked on Windows phone and Xbox Kinect, and then I joined Amazon, oh gosh 2013 help out with the we are kicking off the Android App Store that we have with the new Kindle Fire tablets did that watch Fire TV is Saint with fire phone and then. I am super fortunate I was Employee one for Alexa skill marketing team around 2014, a