Re: A concept resurrected(?) - WG secretary?

[Dean Willis <dean.willis@softarmor.com>]

On Mon, 2003-10-13 at 12:33, Leslie Daigle wrote:
> So -- if you had to live with the fact that "whatever happened
> in the room, it doesn't count if it isn't in the minutes", what
> problems do you have to creating such minutes, and how can
> we solve them?

We've done several things around the SIP-related groups to help out
here:

1) We get several note-takers for each meeting. The "raw" notes from
each note-taker are published along with the slides, agenda, and
official minutes on our supplemental web sites. This helps round out
different contexts should there be later debate about what we came up
with. It is often difficult to get note-takers to actually send their
notes -- usually a few days, and often three to six weeks pass before
they get them sent in.

2) I've started coaching note-takers on recording issues raised,
alternatives discussed, conclusions (or the lack thereof), and major
rationales. It helps to be able to say "please look at the minutes from
the last meeting on our web so you can get close to the right format."
Over the past few years, this has increased note-usability somewhat.

3) We've had the privilege of having Arnoud van Wijk in many meetings.
As he has a hard time following the spoken discussion, he often brings a
professional transcriptionist. Several times we have relied on her
transcripts for generating minutes when the volunteer note-takers
imploded. On the other hand, it's REALLY hard to get concise minutes out
of a word-for-word transcript, especially when speakers fail to identify
themselves. Several times in each meeting I have to ask people to slow
down and speak clearly.

4) In meetings related to SIP but that I'm not actually chairing
(SIMPLE, XCON, etc.) I'll frequently volunteer to take notes. I
generally have these mailed to the chairs before I leave the meeting,
and they've told me this is quite helpful for them. I've noticed this
makes it easier to get people to volunteer to take notes in the meetings
I do chair. Guilt is such a wonderful motivator.

5) In addition to the raw notes, the various stages of "draft" minutes
are both posted to the web site and mailed out to the list. I'll usually
get several suggestions for corrections from the working group before
finalizing the minutes.

And even then, the best of minutes are still not perfectly useful and
I'm always wishing I'd done a better job.

--
Dean