What Is Field Notes?

The full might of American ingenuity, powering your community’s team.

Rural innovators and others solving local problems have the solutions their communities need, but lack of resources was always in the way– until now.

Field Notes is a peer learning app and learning platform that complements and powers innovators who collaborate with teams to solve local problems. Currently our third cycle of testing is underway within the RIDER design team. The benefits:

Facilitate like a pro

A working board… in your pocket

You know what you need to do but there’s that one thing in the way that you just can’t move. Imagine if you could get mentored by not just one peer but many with specialized expertise, who deeply understand and respect your situation, and have overcome the exact problem you face. Now you can tap their advice day or night, in your car or kitchen.

Get help preparing for meetings, analyzing themes, setting goals, and capturing insights. From structuring a learning journey to planning agendas and discussion prompts, Field Notes helps time-strapped leaders make the most of their own and their peers’ time.

Gain ‘the language’

On the cusp of a great opportunity but intimidated by the expertise of the big shots in the room? Don’t know the lingo? Want your knowledge and hard work to shine through? Field Notes and RIDER help you feel prepared, fast.

Make the business case

You and your colleagues know the value you are generating but too often check-writers and people in power don’t see it. Field Notes translates your team’s work into relevant terms that the specific decision-makers you need to influence care about, and will act on.

Get involved

Field Notes, an AI-assisted platform that captures insights from rural practitioners, synthesizes them into shared themes, and turns them into questions that deepen peer learning. It’s how we “start by listening” at scale, and how we make the hard-won knowledge of rural places useful to the whole network.

Field Notes was developed in Q2 2026 for our beta test customer, Upper Cumberland Development District. Our current testing cycle is exploring rural housing stability with two more of our RIDER members. We’re bringing Field Notes to our November convening with other design teams, and we’re looking for more beta test customers, partners, and allies.

Are you a rural innovator, system shifter, or policymaker? Get involved here!

Learn More

Frequently Asked Questions

    • The group or a lead determines an objective. What issue does the group want to understand? What problem do they want to address? What opportunity do they want to prepare for? This informs a Field Notes “Cycle.” 

    • Participants are invited to submit insights. Contributors record what they know and think about a topic — experiences, observations, resources, and questions — through a simple interface. Contributions can include notes, links, and documents. They decide what to share with the group and whether their shares stay anonymous.

    • The platform identifies themes. Field Notes analyzes all shares, surfaces recurring themes, and highlights where the group’s knowledge converges or pulls in different directions.

    • Discussion questions are generated. From those themes, the platform writes focused questions the group can explore together that would help advance the group’s objective— in a live meeting, a small working group, or a new thread in the platform.

    • Live meetings go deeper, and get further, faster. With a shared foundation of synthesized insight, live discussions get richer and more equitable — every voice is already in the room before the meeting begins.

    • Knowledge is captured and built upon. Insights don’t evaporate. Field Notes builds a growing, organized repository of practitioner knowledge that can be referenced, expanded, and harnessed over time.

  • Right now we are testing the app and platform within RIDER and with a small number of beta test customers. If you’d like to sign up to be a beta test customer reach out to sara@svtgroup.net.

  • Field Notes is available to members of the RIDER network for free. Other customers can gain access with varying amounts of support, customization, and price. To learn more reach out to sara@svtgroup.net.

  • We are looking for donors and sponsors to support the development of Field Notes, beta test customers, and rural innovators who’d like to collaborate with or join RIDER. Reach out to us to discuss any or all of these: sara@svtgroup.net