Why Amazon's Alexa Could Be the Death of Meetings

Alexa, the voice assistant for the Amazon Echo device, has "Skills" that allow you to order pizza via voice command or close your garage from anywhere in the world. What if you could hack Alexa to do something even more impressive: create a world without work meetings? Right now, in the shadows of enterprise businesses, there are people hacking away at speech technology products like Alexa to improve daily business life--from scheduling appointments to hailing ride-sharing vehicles. Meanwhile, businesses and entrepreneurs have started asking Alexa to provide updates on status reports, share key metrics with coworkers in other locations, set reminders for daily to-dos, and flag high-priority information. At this rate of development, products like Alexa will soon be programmed to allow executives to get boardroom-like updates from a device on their desk--the way Captain Kirk from Star Trek once did. They'll be able to compile, synthesize, and share information in a matter of minutes, eliminating the need for the meetings where these tasks typically take place.