I am working with Tufts colleagues who have backgrounds in civic engagement and engineering to investigate the use of technology in public meetings. Our goal is to develop software that can facilitate video coverage of meetings, enabling different levels of participation for remote participants. The software will be cheap and scalable–it will allow multiple people to use their phones to film the same meeting. Initially, the software will produce one automatically edited, live video-stream of the meeting, which is much cheaper than hiring a professional videographer/editor. Over time, the software will incorporate other features: ways for people not physically at the meeting to speak, links to documents, simultaneous translations, and even possibly fact-checking.

We are interested in understanding how meetings are run (before and during COVID-19), your experiences (if any) with using technology (e.g., Zoom, Facebook) for meetings, and how future technologies can benefit people.

If you would be willing to take an 11-minute survey to inform this project, please click here: https://tufts.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3t97H86qQy95GpE

The survey is meant for people who have some role in organizing or staffing public/community meetings. You must be at least 18 years old to participate. It does not matter whether you are a US citizen, but you must be in the USA when you take the survey.

Thanks for your advice and ideas!