Alexa Champions

Tim Kahle is a digital marketing expert with a strong background in digital media and music entertainment. As an early adopter of new technologies, he discovered business opportunities in the burgeoning web of the early 2000s—in mobile apps when the first smartphones came to Germany and in social media when it was used primarily to promote businesses and products.

Tim's mission is to convince other people and businesses of the game-changing improvements that voice technology will bring to our lives, now and into the future.

A couple of months before Alexa was introduced in Germany, he and Dominik Meissner found themselves impressed with the new technology. Convinced voice would be the next big thing, they founded one of the first voice assistant agencies, 169 Labs, so they could be a part of this new era from the very beginning. Now, they are recognized as leading experts in creating voice-first experiences for Amazon Alexa.

Tim co-hosts the Cologne Voice Interface Meetup and runs the podcast All About Voice in which he interviews other developers, companies, and voice enthusiasts to share knowledge and insights from different perspectives. In addition to running his agency and doing work in the community, Tim travels around the world to speak about voice at events and meetups (such as Alexa Conference Chattanooga TN, Smart Voice Summit Paris, Voice Meetup London, OMR Festival Hamburg, Voice Meetup Berlin, and UX Meetup Karlsruhe). He also mentors students who are writing theses about digital assistants at RFH Köln, the Cologne Business School, and Popakademie Mannheim.

In 2018 he will host the first Voice Assistant Conference “All About Voice” in Munich, Germany. This will be a B2B event for international leaders in digital marketing and voice technology to discuss new developments and future scenarios of the voice-first ecosystem.

• Tiergeräusche (Animal Noises): This skill entertains kids with animal sounds. 169 Labs’ first skill is part of the Alexa Developer Rewards program and frequently featured in the German Alexa Skills Store.
• LIVIO, der smarte Hausnotruf (Home Emergency Call): Customers use this notification skill to send an automated message to a designated contact whenever they want just by using their voice.
• Adventskalender (Advent Calendar): This is one of the most used skills during Christmas time. Users can reveal interesting, Christmas-related content every day from Dec 1 to Dec 24.
• Schimpf auf Kölsch (Shame on Beer): Designed in partnership with a German newspaper, this skill teaches the regional dialect of the German city of Cologne.