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One thing I immediately noticed about meetings at Google is there'd invariably be a shared google doc for the agenda and meeting notes. There's not just one pe

One thing I immediately noticed about meetings at Google is there'd invariably be a shared google doc for the agenda and meeting notes. There's not just one person taking notes trying to capture what happened, everybody just jumps in and updates the doc all at the same time. Huge time saver and a revelation compared to what I'd seen at previous jobs. I've since introduced this idea elsewhere to great effect.

smn1234 7y ago
any suggestions on what to use if Google Doc isn't permitted for use within an Enterprise? What tool and configuration can enable this?
- remram 7y ago
  If seen whiteboards used for this, by people not knowledgeable enough to setup something like Doc (or rather, not organized enough to set it up in advance). Then someone snaps a picture and sends it around.
- castillar76 7y ago
  Some of the wiki tools like Confluence now have collaborative editing capabilities. Failing that, you can have someone spin up a copy of Etherpad and have everyone hop on it.
Taylor_OD 7y ago
How do you do this effectively so multiple people are not taking notes on the same things? Or is that the point? Is there a blog post or anything about this approach?
- smcameron 7y ago
  Typically nobody takes notes about what someone else is talking about. Instead the person who has the information enters it directly at the beginning of the meeting. Typically the agenda will be divided into topics, and typically one or two people are most strongly associated with each topic, and that person typically has something to say (and record) for that item. Other people might have questions or suggestions that they can add there as well. So people naturally don't step on each other because they're not trying to take notes on what other people are saying, but instead record what they want to get across to other people in the meeting. It works really really well, as the burden of recording what other people say disappears almost completely, and each bit of information is naturally recorded by the person best suited to record that particular bit accurately. It works especially well for weekly staff meetings where you kind of "go around the room" and get status from each person on what they're working on (often, the verbal status is a very brief summary of the longer version that's recorded by that person in the notes), but it works pretty well for more focused meetings as well.
  - solipsism 7y ago
    There's a much more simple answer. You can see where others' cursors are. Don't edit something someone else is about to edit.

smn1234 7y ago

any suggestions on what to use if Google Doc isn't permitted for use within an Enterprise? What tool and configuration can enable this?

remram 7y ago
If seen whiteboards used for this, by people not knowledgeable enough to setup something like Doc (or rather, not organized enough to set it up in advance). Then someone snaps a picture and sends it around.
castillar76 7y ago
Some of the wiki tools like Confluence now have collaborative editing capabilities. Failing that, you can have someone spin up a copy of Etherpad and have everyone hop on it.

Taylor_OD 7y ago

How do you do this effectively so multiple people are not taking notes on the same things? Or is that the point? Is there a blog post or anything about this approach?

smcameron 7y ago
Typically nobody takes notes about what someone else is talking about. Instead the person who has the information enters it directly at the beginning of the meeting. Typically the agenda will be divided into topics, and typically one or two people are most strongly associated with each topic, and that person typically has something to say (and record) for that item. Other people might have questions or suggestions that they can add there as well. So people naturally don't step on each other because they're not trying to take notes on what other people are saying, but instead record what they want to get across to other people in the meeting. It works really really well, as the burden of recording what other people say disappears almost completely, and each bit of information is naturally recorded by the person best suited to record that particular bit accurately. It works especially well for weekly staff meetings where you kind of "go around the room" and get status from each person on what they're working on (often, the verbal status is a very brief summary of the longer version that's recorded by that person in the notes), but it works pretty well for more focused meetings as well.
- solipsism 7y ago
  There's a much more simple answer. You can see where others' cursors are. Don't edit something someone else is about to edit.