CONNECTING CONVERSATIONS
Local Voices Network
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THE LVN PLATFORM
Human Listening + Machine Learning

Cortico’s Local Voices Network (LVN) platform enables partner organizations to understand their communities’ lived experiences, amplify typically underheard voices, inform public understanding, and drive better policy and decisions.

LVN is a unique “human listening + machine learning” system that combines the ancient techniques of human dialogue and deep listening (through facilitated small-group conversations) with the analytic power of modern AI (through tools for identifying patterns/themes across conversations).

The result is a system that captures, at scale, public sentiment with a level of authenticity and nuance that surveys and focus groups cannot match.

THE LVN PLATFORM
Human Listening + Machine Learning
HOW LVN CAN WORK FOR YOU
Gather | Understand | Share & Act
Gather people in conversation

Partners host small-group, facilitated conversations on Zoom or in person (around our Digital Hearth) that are recorded, uploaded, and transcribed on the platform. Conversations are driven by personal experiences that participants share, and the data is owned by the partners. Sharing of audio highlights from one conversation into another enables the surfacing of diverse viewpoints and experiences.

Understand via analytic tools

Developed in collaboration with MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication, AI-powered listening and analytic tools help users see patterns across conversations, identify themes, and highlight voices around what matters most in the community. The platform supports management of conversation archives, speech content analysis and visualization, and online/social posting of audio highlights.

Listen to a public conversation from our COVID-19 collection here
Share + act on what you find

To surface these insights and voices into public dialogue and decision making, partners can easily share and publish excerpts using visualizations, public share links, downloadable audio, or iframe embed. With customizable privacy settings, conversations can be made public, opening up participant voices to community leaders, policymakers, members of the media, or other communities.

HUMAN DIALOGUE AND LISTENING
Elements of an LVN Conversation
Small-group

With a recommended 4-6 people per conversation, our sessions are a welcome change from crowded town halls or open meetings where underheard voices get drowned out.

Experience-based

By guiding participants to share their stories, LVN conversations capture the kind of insights that shape our everyday lives and that can’t be gleaned from surveys and focus groups.

Participant-driven

Community members are invited to take the lead in an LVN conversation, responding to questions from a facilitator who is there to provide a comfortable space.

HUMAN DIALOGUE AND LISTENING
Elements of an LVN Conversation

LVN CONVERSATION
Why Record?

People in communities everywhere are tired of speaking up and not feeling heard. Recording small group conversations is a way to honor the individuals who share and make a commitment to elevate their voices for broader impact beyond the moment of a conversation itself. Through recording, LVN makes it possible for personal experiences to effect direct change by informing leadership selection, strategic direction, and policy change.

 

Collect consent from informed participants.

We offer partners experience-tested advice and resources in recording conversations and collecting simple verbal consent from participants who feel informed, energized, and prepared to be recorded.

Upload audio files with one click.

You can use any platform or tool you wish to record your conversations, as LVN is compatible with any video meeting platform or device that creates an audio file.

Own your data.

Our partners own their data and fully control who can access it and what is done with it.

LVN CONVERSATION
Why Record?
LVN CONVERSATION
Reflections on the Experience

Listen to a highlight medley from participants reflecting on their LVN experience.

HUMAN + MACHINE SENSE MAKING
Core LVN Technology
Speech Processing

Audio recordings of conversations are transcribed with each word in the transcript assigned to its speaker. We use a combination of state-of-art automated transcription and high-quality human transcription.

Natural Language Processing

Conversation content may be accessed via search or through discovery aided by automated topic analysis. We intentionally use transparent, explainable models to address concerns of machine learning bias.

Analytic Sense Making

Data visualization, selection and tagging features enable powerful content analysis.

HUMAN + MACHINE SENSE MAKING
Core LVN Technology
ADVANCED RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
LVN Labs

Cortico and MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication work together to develop and integrate advanced research and prototypes (e.g., conversation analytics and data trust architecture) into the LVN platform.

 

Digital Hearth

Our prototype Digital Hearth is a custom audio hardware device for high-quality audio capture/playback seamlessly integrated into LVN.

Conversation Analytics

We are developing advanced natural language processing algorithms to analyze discourse dynamics and conversation quality.

Data Trust

We are working with partners to co-design and pilot a privacy-preserving data trust architecture to serve the needs of highly sensitive topics where trust is paramount.

ADVANCED RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
LVN Labs
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