SOMERS, N.Y. - One Somers entrepreneur is asking folks to imagine using their phones to scan a fridge magnet or a sign and hearing a real, personal message from town Supervisor Robert Scorrano or another town official.
The new technology, branded as VoiceTag® by Hirdle LLC, acts like a QR code and can be deployed to verbally convey information about everything from emergency situations, historical sites, and park programs to library hours, community events, and the latest updates on the Route 202 culvert project.
Anything that has a surface – signs, flyers, business cards, bumper stickers, fridge magnets, etc. – is fair game.
As Hirdle founder and CEO David Ouimette put it at his recent presentation to the Town Board: “For 500 years print carried ideas in one direction. Print informed, educated, and inspired but it never spoke. Now it can speak.”
He demonstrated by using a VoiceTag® of The Elephant Hotel’s history. It featured the unmistakable voice of master Hudson Valley storyteller Jonathan Kruk, who’s been known to portray Somers farmer-turned-circus pioneer Hachaliah Bailey.
Intrigued by the possibilities of communicating information quickly and efficiently to the public, the Town Board voted unanimously on Thursday, Aug. 6, to authorize Scorrano to execute an agreement with Ouimette, who will provide “support, oversight, and help with the implementation” of the proposed “municipal information availability service.”
“I like the platform, I like the idea of getting information out to our residents in a new and different way,” said Scorrano.
Somers will be the first town to sign on with Hirdle, he said.
The basic service will cost it approximately $3,000 a year.
There are no apps, accounts, or downloads required. You simply go to your camera icon -- on either an Android or Apple phone - and point it at the VoiceTag®, which looks like a QR code wearing headphones.
Because studies show that most folks don't listen past 40 seconds, the messages are short and sweet.
If more information is required, it can guide the user to call a specific number, send an email, add a town event to their calendar, or open a link to the right town resource.
The town controls the content and decides the actions tied to every tag. The message itself can be quickly changed at its discretion.
Text itself can be translated into voice.
Ouimette, who bills himself as an “audio branding visionary,” promoted his “municipal information availability service” as “frictionless.”
The message itself can also be conveyed via a cloned voice, originating either from a designated town official or a professional actor. It can be made to sound male or female. It can even be in another language.
If the town wants to take it to the next level, it can choose to enable an AI assistant, an “on-brand support option that lets a person ask a follow-up question and get an immediate answer,” according to Ouimette.
“The user chooses how to interact. They can speak their question and hear the answer or type it and read the reply. Someone who can’t read fine print can stay entirely in voice. Someone in a quiet setting can stay in text. Either way, the town’s voice is the constant,” he explained in his proposal.
Because it draws exclusively from officials, town-verified and supplied content, it can’t go “off script, invent an answer, or pull anything from the open web,” Ouimette explained, emphasizing that “if the town has not provided it, the assistant does not say it.”
He promised that the service follows strict privacy laws. It does not capture or retain any “Personally Identifiable Information.”
However, it does collect “data analytics” that are restricted to “anonymous usage patterns” and that track “active engagement across specific town assets.”
While it can be used to send alerts about severe weather, local road closures, and power outages out to the public at a moment’s notice, the new service will not replace the town’s CodeRed emergency notification system, Scorrano said.
Although an exact timeline for the rollout wasn’t given at the meeting, Ouimette has suggested that in “Phase 1,” high-traffic assets, such as the trailheads at Reis Park “go live first.”
Signs will follow the town’s established specifications and approved vendors for outdoor plaques.
The next step would be for the town to expand its “full civic and recreational footprint, including town facilities, and the at-home fridge magnet.
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