The Networker Project

Small talk is a common barrier that many people face when networking, as it can be difficult to move beyond superficial conversation and build deeper connections with others. Often, people find themselves asking the same generic questions, such as “what do you do?” or “where are you from?” without really getting to know the person they are speaking with. This can lead to missed opportunities for building meaningful relationships and can make networking feel like a chore rather than a valuable experience.

First Demo interface for the Networker Assistant.

One potential solution to overcoming the problem of small talk in networking is to remember more about the person you are speaking with and find common areas of interest without even having to ask. This requires actively listening to the person and taking note of important details such as their job, hobbies, and personal interests. By remembering these details and finding commonalities, you can steer the conversation towards topics that are meaningful to both of you, helping to build a deeper connection. The Networker project is working to facilitate this by creating an AI-powered assistant that can help you remember important details about people and guide you towards deeper, more meaningful conversations. By utilizing technology to help us remember more about the people we interact with, we can break down the barriers of small talk and build more authentic relationships.

Conversations are stored in JSON formatting in a MongoDB instance.

This was why the Networker project was built. Networker seeks to improve the way we network and communicate with others. By using OpenAI’s da-vinci algorithms (many of you will know their frontend as “ChatGPT”) combined with and Speechly’s Speech to Text and Google’s Text to Speech technology, this project aims to help people remember important details about the people they interact with, creating deeper and more fruitful relationships.

The ultimate goal of the project is to create two main features:

1. Networking Assistant: This bot will help you log and remember important details and facts about the people you interact with. This information will be stored in a JSON formatted database and will include any data gathered from your conversations. This will help you to remember more about people, allowing you to build deeper relationships with them.
2. Inquiry Assistant: This bot will ask rich, meaningful questions to help you get to know yourself and your connections better. Acting as both an assistant and personal coach, it will help you inquire more about life and guide you to have more meaningful conversations with others.

Although the Networker project has a lot of potential, there are some setbacks that the team is working to overcome. These include logic loops, high payload to request memory and/or formatting, and difficulty in finding historical data. The team is also working on developing memory locally and virtually for organizational access and small social groups, as well as repeated memory. Overall, the Networker project is an exciting endeavor that has the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate with others and deepen our relationships.

GitHub - apiispanen/networker

Deployment is found below:

https://networker.up.railway.app/

And yes, this entire post was built using ChatGPT.

Questions?

apiispanen@berkeley.edu