Public meetings with extra voice

Getting the most out of a public meeting takes effort. It requires facilitators to take accurate notes and summarise the mini-debates and mechanisms to prevent the loudest voices from dominating the dialogue. 

Some time ago MySocitety launched a little known project called SayIt which revitalised the humble transcript.  The idea was big – preserve a conversation using a visual transcript which would use layers of metadata to indicate things like the speakers and the passing of time.  The project closed  prematurely in 2022 but now seems more relevant than ever.

Consider, therefore, that today we can capture every single voice in every single debate and combine this into a near instantaneous, queryable summary. Better still, facilitate recordings using a humble mobile phone.  Check out Dembrane.

Apart from the obvious advantage of analysis and ability to capture all the conversations in a room, communication using voice is so much quicker and highly accessible compared to the written form.  It means that you don’t need good vision or computer skills, good spelling or even much literacy.  It might even help people cut through difficult regional accents – maybe even multilingual feedback.

But it’s not all plain sailing.  There’s potential for the presence of a recording device to alter the natural flow of a conversation and some people might feel intimidated by being recorded. On the other hand, people may feel empowered by the fact that every sentence uttered is being considered.  At the far end of the spectrum there might be concerns about voice identity protection but that feels a little risk adverse.

Of course, it’s not just what people say but how they say it. Whilst the technology exists to extract emotion from spoken content, it’s not likely to happen quickly due to restrictions in the EU AI Act.  Perhaps, then, the natural evolution here is the application of computer vision.

Anyhow, just think of the new possibilities for citizen juries and consultation more broadly.  As we enter into the new world of augmented consultation and engagement this feels like a special moment.  Finally the opportunity to move in real-time with argument, conflict and consensus.  

As with everything brilliant the exact opposite is also likely to be brilliant.  Our prediction is for low-tech or ‘no tech’ to feature in equal spades.