Published to clients: November 20, 2025 ID: TBW2107
Published to Readers: November 21, 2025
Whisper Email Release:
Public Release Date:
Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Abstract:
“This Whisper Report explores the most desired casino innovations identified at G2E 2025. Industry experts highlighted two key areas: operational improvements for casinos—such as seamless system integration and cross-platform play—and enhanced player experiences through biometric authentication, personalized VIP services, and engagement strategies. These insights reveal opportunities for transformation and differentiation in gaming technology.”
After over 200 minutes of recording, 6 flights of stairs, and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of the rebranded Customer Connect Expo 2025 or CCE25 closes. The event featured over 43 keynotes and seminars and over 200 vendors exhibiting. Keynotes included discussions on customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, data-driven personalization, and AI in customer experience. A seminar focused on enhancing call centers with AI agenst is also included. Exhibits ranged from technology supporting customer experience and call centers, data consolidation and customer 360, to entire platforms and BPO services.
The Conference
The event featured over 43 keynotes and seminars and over 200 vendors exhibiting.
Technologies covered include telephony, networking, SIP, call blocking, data, data management, data fabrics, customer 360, AI, LLMs, agentic AI, conversational AI, and bots.
Cautions
Just because a solution ‘works’ doesn’t mean the product was designed with customer privacy in mind.
Platforms that combine multiple functions can look like a quick win unless you already have installed components or desire to switch a specific function to a best in class. Ensure any ‘platforms’ leverage standards for any components. By adhering to standards, customers can avoid vendor lock into the platform and keep the door open for maximum architectural flexibility.
After over 200 minutes of filming, 6 flights of stairs, over 30 fact checks, our coverage of the rebranded event, Customer Connect Expo 2025, or CCE25, comes to a close. CCE25 opened with a grand ribbon cutting ceremony featuring the Global Voice of Customer Experience, Dennis Wakabayashi. TBW Advisors LLC’s clients and subscribers may recognize Dennis from last year’s AMA Industry Whispers event with Dennis. Admittedly, this event is one we always look forward to having covered it in 2023 and 2024 under its previous branding of CCCLV for Call & Contact Center Expo Las Vegas. The event features 4 stages hosting a total of 43 keynotes and seminars. The theaters for the speakers were mixed amongst over 200 exhibitors in expo hall. The keynotes and seminars were full coming in just under maximum capacity. The last two years, there were notable audio issues for the speakers. This year they had a dual audio set up with headphones and speakers. I only heard one major feedback sound the entire event. In fact, the sound worked so well that it kept the audience enthralled preventing them from walking around as much as in previous years. This led exhibitors to politely describe foot traffic as a “slow”. While the total booth traffic was light, the exhibitors did admit that the leads they obtained were rock solid with most easily covering the expenses. In other words, everyone was there was serious about conducting business with not much fluff. Food was also available within the expo hall itself.
While at CCE25, we conducted research for three additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: CCE25 playlist in its entirety. Once the video edition is available, the playlist will be sited as a pinned comment on the video edition. It is also easy to locate any previous Conference Whispers playlists through TBW Advisors Website under Subscribers research/Conference Whispers.
During our coverage at CCE25 we were able to catch 4 keynotes and one seminar. The first keynote we captured was by Pfizer’s Wayne Simmons. Wayne reminded all that customers want companies that are interested in partnering for life when possible. In many domains such as banking, it is very inconvenient and takes significant effort to switch companies. One a customer is lost – it is expensive to reacquire that customer if at all possible.
Ford’s Dr. Kalifa Oliver drove home the obvious but too often overlooked point. If an employee is miserable and being treated horrible, how do you think they will treat your customers? A company should not be worried about an employee being happy but rather ensuring they have the tools and support to do the job. The development of employee satisfaction tools tend to be behind customer satisfaction tools but they need not be separate tools. It’s simple, data shows a satisfied and empowered employee is more likely to provide a positive customer experience.
The second day keynotes kicked off with Macy’s Siva Kannan Ganesan on the power of data. Siva highlighted the importance of capturing customer data including every click. A customer experience must be engineered. The two-tower approach was recommended for one’s digital strategy the achieve the ultimate in personalization.
Ring Central’s John Finch was on the Keynote stage to talk about Agentic AI driving the next generation of customer experience. The presentation went beyond revealing the next generation of customer experience tools. Context for the value contributed by conversational AI, generative AI, bots as well as the power of agents and personalized assistants was also provided. Expanding on that agentic AI theme was a seminar on expanding your call center with AI agents. Mitrol’s Francisco Trojano shared their approach to improve contact center’s impact. This seminar included various success stories.
The exhibits had a large variety of vendors including various components of solutions to create the ultimate customer experience. To the surprise of some, fax usage has risen 23%. Faxsipit shared their solution that won’t create a chain of mis transmissions and errors even for 1400-page documents! Perhaps, like many of the exhibitors, you are meeting and speaking with your prospects at a conference and don’t want to miss any of the potential leads. Claritiv shared their solution to capture and enable your ability to analyze these interactions. Need a method to see what the customer is experiencing first hand? With Blitz you can send a quick link that allows them to share their camera view without downloading a mobile application. Perhaps you interact between the physical and digital world and want a vendor that can help you? Put Unified Direct Solution on your radar who specialize in optimizing such a scenario including balancing needs based upon conditions. If you are short of staff and are thinking about outsourcing but not sure you want your customers to deal with outsourced agents, you might want to evaluate Kongusto. Now that you have all this staff, you’ll want them to feel like a team even if they are spread around the world. To that end, Nexgen virtual office shared their next generation of leveraging technology to create the ultimate in virtual office. Regardless of your technology, if you were seeking to market your solution, Greenstar Marketing was there with their services.
There were exhibitors with products focused on bringing your data together and providing insights. Maprehend focused on the expertise of your very best employee and empowering all. Likewise, if you wanted to clone your best sales agent, Verse.ai focuses on the best message on the right channel to deliver results. Enthu.ai connects and consumes all your customer interactions with a side of automation to provide useful customer insights. Diabolocom leverages a proprietary AI solution that is trained exclusively on your data for your private model. Zaon’s approach is to start with the problem or use case and connects the subject matter experts to create solutions.
If you are seeking a contact soluton provider beyond the data and perhaps a solution that is actually a carrier, Nobelbiz is a telephony carrier and can assist if your calls are not getting connected correctly. Assembled is a support operations platform with three pillars. One pillar handles AI agents through all forms of contacts, second is vendor management offering including handling billing, and third workforce management to increase productivity. A platform for omni channel communications highly integrated with AI agents is available through Mitrol as described earlier in their seminar. If you are looking for a platform with a side of business process outsourcing (BPO), Etech harnesses the power of AI to drive your customer experience through calls, chats and all customer interactions. The three focus areas include contact center services, Quality and analytics and customer development. ValueLabs leverages its own generative AI platform built leveraging various LLMs. ValueLabs focuses on four areas: outsourced product development, quality engineering, data engineer and process automation. ProntoBPO offers shared services, rental stations, BPO as well as software development. ProntoBPO specializes in verticals such as Pest, Lawn and HVAC services.
CCE conference will unfortunately move to Atlanta, GA for 2026.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
After 85 flights of stairs, ~40,000 steps, 12 Vegas loops trips, and over 40 factchecks, our coverage of 2024 NAB Show, National Association of Broadcasters Show, ends. NAB Show was held in Las Vegas from April 13-17. It is the premier event for content professionals in the broadcast, media, and entertainment ecosystem seeking to create superior and innovative audio and video experiences. The conference featured over700,000 net square feet of exhibits, nearly 1300 exhibitors, 750 educational courses and sessions, and over 61,000+ attendees from an amazing 163 countries. Attendees witnessed endless examples of cloud enabled remote production, early implementations of generative AI, and discussions on sustainability in production and technical security for remote live production.
The Conference
The first NAB Show was held October 11, 1923, in New York City at the Commodore Hotel. There were 16 radio stations represented among the 23 attendees. NAB Show moved to Las Vegas in 1991.
NAB Show was held April 13-17, 2024, in Las Vegas. The event featured over 61,000 attendees. Within those attendees 27% were international attendees from an amazing 163 countries represented.
The exhibitions featured nearly 1300 exhibitors in over 700,000 net square feet of exhibits a 30% gain over 2023.
Attendees at NABShow held titles such as Production Director, Production Editor, Production Engineer, Broadcast and Network Engineer, Logistics Manager, Electrical Engineer, Sound and Video Engineer, Director of Product Management, Technical Architect, and data scientist.
After 85 flights of stairs and 40,000 steps, and 12 Vegas loops trip, our coverage of the 2024 NAB Show produced by National Association of Broadcasters, ends. NAB Show 2024 exhibitions surpassed last year’s by nearly 30% with 700,000 square feet in all. Attendance came in at 61,000 attendees with 27% coming from international destinations. NABPAC contributors were recognized in the West Hall. The conference leveraged the entire indoor conference exhibit spaces in the West Hall, Central Hall, South Upper and South Lower and a few rooms in North Halls. A majority of North Hall was under construction. Fortunately, the Vegas Loop was running with free rides so one needed not walk the entire distance. We took advantage of the loop no less than a dozen times. When asked attendees reported meeting their business objectives and described it as really good. Once again – the quality of attendees itself was mentioned by the exhibitors. Our entire playlist of video research for NAB Show is available online at our YouTube Channel.
With over 200 exhibitions and over 150 sessions on AI, generative AI was once again the star of the show. Amid the buzz about AI and generative AI transforming broadcasting, one question was on the mind of video engineers – “Will it affect our jobs?”. Luisa Winters had an answer in her keynote. If you are adapting and using the new technologies, you will be fine. No different from the move from tapes. More importantly, you will not only be able to deliver something acceptable but have time to make it great! Another keynote emphasized the importance of great metadata for your assets if you want to fully leverage generative AI solutions in sports coverage. As one might expect, there were countless examples* of tools for production and distribution and each of the tasks involved. Pixellot was on hand with their exciting deep learning automated sports tracking leveraged for streaming sports. Their solution leveraging their state-of-the-art cameras and patented technology that stitches it all together. As would be expected, each sport has its own model. In fact, they had over 10,000 live events streaming as I conducted the interview. Pixellot also includes capabilities for monetizing said sports streams.
One keynote provided a demo of Adobe Premier Pro, something we didn’t recall seeing at Adobe Summit.Backlight showcased their extensive collection of products for media content creation and distribution. Backlight’s solution leverages AI and generative AI to simplify media workflows. Backlight allows horizontal and vertical video distribution. Backlight leverages their own AI and LLM models to transcribe the video/audio. That transcription is then used to quickly generate all the metadata to put on social media. They leverage automation to automate the creation of sports highlight clips out to social media by registering all key moments as the game plays. Finally, their solution also enables monetization.
Amazon and AWS were at NAB Show in full force. A huge display was on hand where they shared their entire Generative AI stack with those looking to develop solutions. Experts were on hand if you had any questions including seeking insights on Amazon Bedrock. In the Microsoft pavilion, SymphonyAI was there as part of the beet the buzzer architecture that enables viewers to play along with game shows. Microsoft offered a Pilot demonstration of AI enabled marketing.
Transcription and translation are a big area for generative AI in broadcasting and media, sometimes referred to as localization. This topic was featured in a keynote as well as in exhibits. Microsoft featured their solution based on Open AI. TRINT featured their text to speech solution adopted across the industry. One exciting development is the ability to do full motion capture without putting on a special suit due to generative AI! In fact, Zerospace Captury was on exhibit sharing their solution. Interestingly, the room only requires about 15 minutes to set up the space to capture motion.
With all of the generative content capabilities shown, stopping misinformation and deepfakes was a very popular topic featured in a keynote. The solution involves knowledge of the content frequently communicated through metadata. To that end, Hand (Human & Digital) shared their solution for identity intelligence for notable talent.
Leveraging capabilities of 5g, XGN featured their solution that enables users to connect direct to mobile to send content from the field – no SIM card required! Cobalt Digital shared their extensive collection of open gear based on 2110, 12G and ultra-low latency. Their gear also supports Rest APIs. Cobalt Digital featured routers, control panels, and multi-viewers for video and audio processing. As might be expected with the continual increased resolution, a new video compression standard is being rolled out and is already rolled out in Brazil, LCEVC. In the LCEVC showcase, all the providers with their next generation of tech leveraging LCEVC were on display. Ateme also focuses on compression – for the purpose of technologies such as the Apple Vision Pro which they showed off in the exhibition. Once you created all your content, if you wanted to manage the programming data so it is accurate in every tv program listing, Titan TV shared their solution. If you wanted to optimize the way in which you manage ad campaigns, Showseeker shared their solution to simplify advertising scheduling.
For those requiring the ability to manage the labor and payroll for that remote labor, Procrewz shared their solution. If keeping track of and on top of all the compliance requirements for broadcast and streaming is your challenge, Vela exhibited their product.
NAB Show also featured technology and solutions to support the creator economy. In Vimeo’s session they stated that one can expect 2% of free YouTube subscribers to convert to a paid subscriber on Vimeo. For those wishing to participate in a reality show about making creators or leverage it for advertising, the team from the TV show Follow Me had a lively panel. The central Main Stage featured an interview with Jennifer Hudson. During the interview Jennifer told the audience that she is always cheering for everyone. A great session on diversity in broadcasting featured the Las Vegas Aces Alysha Clark who majored in broadcasting during her college career. Alysha Clark made the great point to all that inclusion means opening prime spots to diversity be it tv slots or board and executive spots in corporate America.
NAB Show is held every year in Las Vegas since 1991. The next NAB Show will occur April 5-9, 2025, in Las Vegas, NV.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
Internet 2.0 Conference is one of five conferences that makes up 2.0 Conferences. In total the conferences had seven hundred attendees over 3 days packed with solid keynotes. Attendees seemed to agree that small but mighty was a good description of the event. Common themes including where is society going with technology as well as how these changes will impact society.
Highlights
Five conferences all in one meant this tiny conference packed a powerful punch.
This event was all keynotes with speakers rotating between the 5 shows.
Cautions
This conference packs the sessions back-to-back. One must plan on your own for bio and physical movement breaks to avoid excessive sedentary day.
The biggest theme at the conference focused on where innovation in technology is going to take us. One keynote on the evolution of intelligence had a panel discuss the paradigms that go beyond AI and ML This session also included an interested example of how Yazzmoney was leveraging blockchain. Specifically, they are helping Zambia government to tokenize cattle, minerals, wildlife and renewable energy. This enables the cattle ranchers, for example to access the value of the cattle. Another keynote with an all-male panel discussed how AR, VR and MR can revolutionize customer experience. Michael Koch keynote was a great discussion on the evolution of work, life, and play. Michael Koch discussed how technology has changed and is going to continue to change even faster with wireless power closer on the horizon than we imagine. Parts of this keynote reminded us of the 100 years of innovation exhibit at CES. One of the fascination aspects of Michael Koch’s keynote was the discussion around moving from creative and getting the ideas to adoption and conversion. There was to be another keynote on AI that looked like great potential at the start. Unfortunately the speakers time was cut in half and the deck didn’t work, thus Gary Y. Wu went Beyond AI in his talk. Futurist writer Jeffrey James Seyferth shared his vision of tech nirvana with attendees.
One thing all agreed on is there will be an adaptation that must occur. Cyber burnout was a real concern in the keynote on wearables, robot and IoT. That session hilariously drew the parallel of the conference attendees not having breaks in between all the sessions to describe how cyber burnout occurs. With all this change, technologist need to be great communicators. To that end, Archer Now CEO, Trung Q. Pham brought his keynote, “The art of Communication Jiujitsu” to meet the demand. Trung emphasized that we retain 90% of what we teach.
Several panellists mentioned the concern of impact around generative AI hallucinations. To that end, one panellist shared that hallucinations are to be expected as the technology is in its toddler phase of reasoning. An interesting second concern on generative AI was raised concerning the massive computational requirements for a simple answer is surely not good for the planet.
We were able to catch one interesting keynote on security. David Ronn from Zecurity shared their on-premises and edge solution to ending ransomware that blocks and examines all commands outside of a simple read command.
2.0 Conferences 2025 conference will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada at Caesars in April of 2025.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
This webinar will feature a panel of engineers that have deployed generative AI and their solution is in customers’ hands. You will be able to take away insights on the selection of technology, the process of realizing a solution, pitfalls, nightmares and what the panelists would do differently next time.
Research Code 2036.
Dr. Doreen Galli has 6 degrees including a Waterloo CS Ph.D. in SIMD data storage and 8 patent held by IBM with 2 more pending at Microsoft. She has led significant and measurable changes at IBM, DPWN, Dell, ATT and most recently Microsoft where she was the platform architect for Azure and CTO in Azure’s MCIGET. She was trained as an analyst by Gartner where she was recognized as an expert in all things data from ingestion, quality, governance, integration, management and all forms and analytics including sensor data.
An All-American Athlete Collegiate Runner, Dr. Galli enhanced her formal education with process improvement certifications of Black Belt, Lean Six Sigma, and Pull Thinking, along with Technology and Network Transformation Certifications from AT&T. She is a Top 25 Women on the Web recipient and a published author with over 200 articles. Her first book, “Distributed Operation Systems” was published by Prentice Hall in English and Chinese. Her second book, “Galli’s Keys to Success: Optimize your College Career” is available via online bookstores. Dr. Galli has been an invited speaker at such distinguished venues as Forbes Executive Summit, CIO Summit, CIO Academy, Grace Hopper, Network+ Interop Las Vegas, Gartner’s Catalyst as well as The Internet Security Conference.
Ofer is the CEO of Tomato.ai, a speech GenAI startup that’s raised $10M to soften accents on calls in real-time. Previously he led a virtual agent startup within Google’s Area 120 incubator, for which he closed >$500M in Call Center AI deals. Prior to that Ofer led and sold a developer tools startup to Google, and an ad network startup to IAC. He holds a MS/BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from Cornell.
Kevin is Cofounder and CEO of BirchAI, a leader in automating complex workflows in healthcare and other high-compliance call centers. BirchAI is a venture-backed spinout from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, one of the country’s leading AI research organizations.
Previously in his career, Kevin worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA, GE Capital, McKinsey & Company’s global healthcare practice, and as an independent consultant across the healthcare sector. He also led business development in healthcare for the Austin-based AI startup, SparkCognition. Outside of work, Kevin cofounded Start Reading Now, a research-based non-profit that addresses Summer Setback and the Achievement Gap by funding thousands of young kids each year to buy their own personal library of 30 new books.
Kevin was a German and Political Science major at the University of Nebraska, and completed his MBA at the University of Minnesota.
Stephan Müller is Co-Founder and CTO of FLOWIT, a Swiss HR-Tech Startup. FLOWIT is a GenAI-powered people development platform that drives employee engagement and reduces employee churn. Prior to joining FLOWIT, Stephan Müller obtained a Master’s degree from ETH Zurich in Data Science, with a focus on theoretical Data Science and in particular Generative Networks, and worked in AI consulting, completing various project in the space of Recommender Systems and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Raika came to the United States when she was 15 years old and received her Bachelor of Science in Physics from California State University Northridge. She started as a junior system engineer and is currently the lead engineer at Livenation/Ticketmaster Information Security.
Esha Joshi is the cofounder and Chief Product Officer of Yoodli, an AI powered speech coach. Her dream is to help women become more confident communicators so they get the opportunities they deserve. After struggling with public speaking for many years, Esha’s now a fomer Toastmaster speaking champion and Grace Hopper keynote speaker. She’s passionate about helping others become the best communicators they can be. Prior to Yoodli, Esha worked at Apple in engineering and product management capacities to help launch Apple TV+.
