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My approach to taking notes in meetings

blog.witful.com

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Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#31

Post by 123pie123 »

irrational wrote: post #24

I cannot multitask. At all. Listening and writing are two different tasks and I cannot do both at the same time. If you ever see me writing in a meeting you can know 100% that I am not able to listen to anything being said while I am writing. I am amazed by people who seemingly can both write and listen at the same time.

I'm exactly the same

I either need to concentrate on the discussions or I concentrate on writing notes. If I try to do both at the same time I fail at both - badly.

I either record the meetings, ask a collegue to help take high level notes - then immediatly after the meeting put more detail in them from memory - then circulate (asap) the actions for feedback/ comments etc..

failing that, I will stop the meeting to write stuff down - ideally sharing the whiteboard, and this process showing everyone the degree of my (seriously) bad spelling, bad grammar and the amazing ability to completely miss multiple words out (or reverse the word order)

Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#32

Post by dominotw »

counternotions wrote: post #5

The country where I’m from, the de facto corporate culture trains the junior employees to furiously scribble down notes as a manager/executive is speaking, as a formality and sign of respect. How much these notes are legible and useful will vary widely, I’ve seen some laughable ones, but it is a positive social tool to enforce the act of listening.

Reminds of " kim jong il looking at things" pictures where whole bunch of minions are jotting down his "on the spot guidance". They even have placards marking the places where such guidance was received and at what date.

Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#34

Post by hammock »

linker3000 wrote: post #11

I've used this method since the early 1990s: 1) Use no tech. 2) Cornell-inspired note-taking paper with topics in the left margin and speaker names/notes/sub-topics in the main body. There's room for mind maps if you wish. 3) Actions go in the bottom field so they are easy to find later and mark off when done. If you need to reference something in the body notes for follow-up or action (because you don't have time to…

This approach is brilliant. Thank you for sharing.

Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#35

Post by dsr_ »

echelon wrote: post #19
pdmccormick wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does “ldap” mean in this context?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Directory_Access_P... In the context I used it, ldap = username Essentially all employees have a unique account that is used for email, unix sysadmin, etc., and this is accomplished via LDAP. You can sync permissions, auth, and more between various systems if they all speak the same language. To use our hacker news usernames, yours would be "pdmccormick" and mine would be "ec…

Oh, you mean

usernames

or

GECOS

or

handles

I've never referred to names as ldaps and I would find it horribly confusing to do so...

Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#36

Post by rbonvall »

echelon wrote: post #19
pdmccormick wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does “ldap” mean in this context?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Directory_Access_P... In the context I used it, ldap = username Essentially all employees have a unique account that is used for email, unix sysadmin, etc., and this is accomplished via LDAP. You can sync permissions, auth, and more between various systems if they all speak the same language. To use our hacker news usernames, yours would be "pdmccormick" and mine would be "ec…

It's the first time I see usernames referred to as "ldaps". Learning stuff like this is why Hacker News is my favorite HTTP :o)

Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#37

Post by [deleted] »

pdmccormick wrote: post #18
echelon wrote: post #10

Here's my shorthand. Google docs. Nested by topic, use ldaps, use "AI (action item)" to assign tasks. ldap1: This thing * ldap2: No that thing * ldap3: Because of this reason * AI(ldap1): Fix that thing ldap3: What about X? * ldap1: I think X is at risk * ldap2: We have an alternative from [this vendor](link) ... * AI(unassigned): Investigate vendor alternative to fix X It's quick and easy to edit/share. Google Docs…

What does “ldap” mean in this context?

[deleted]

Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#38

Post by throwaways885 »

dsr_ wrote: post #35
echelon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Directory_Access_P... In the context I used it, ldap = username Essentially all employees have a unique account that is used for email, unix sysadmin, etc., and this is accomplished via LDAP. You can sync permissions, auth, and more between various systems if they all speak the same language. To use our hacker news usernames, yours would be "pdmccormick" and mine would be "ec…

Oh, you mean usernames or GECOS or handles I've never referred to names as ldaps and I would find it horribly confusing to do so...

I've only ever heard the term ldap from Googlers, to mean, "username".

Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#39

Post by mgadams3 »

IMO it's generally more of a tooling problem than a methodology problem... like trying to build a skyscraper without power tools.

The main challenge with taking notes during meetings is that the tools use were designed for drafting in a non-linear environment. But notes in meetings are directly related to the content of what is being said at a specific moment in time, and the text-only notes usually fail to capture the full essence compared to watching that part of the video.

When building my last start-up, an online school on Zoom, we recorded every lecture so our students could go back and review the content during the working sessions. But they found it hard to correlate their Google Doc notes with the moment in the recording they wanted to go back and watch. But since we pulled over the Zoom chat log with timestamps back to moments in the recording, they started taking notes there so they could keep track of the part they knew they wanted to watch later or reference.

Long story short, when the online school got acquired I started my current start-up https://grain.co to turn that insight into software anyone could use to better capture and share knowledge during any kind of meeting.

Re: My approach to taking notes in meetings

#40

Post by akio »

dougmwne wrote: post #2

For me, I really like Zoom recording paired with the automatic transcripts. The transcripts help me to find the section of the video I need to review. I wish there was a feature to tie your typed notes into the video timecodes so by clicking on a note I had made, I could jump to the point in the meeting where I had made the note.

Grain[0] is what you're looking for. (Disclaimer: I work at Grain.)

It lets you take notes during your meeting that are timestamped to a recording and transcript.

It also lets you share clips from your meeting both after and live during the meeting. It indexes your transcripts to make your meetings searchable later, and does a lot of other things to maximize the value you extract from meetings.

[0] https://grain.co

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