It's a tricky balance between a useful records, and stifling peoples comfort to discuss and speak openly.
General solution is to send "meeting notes" at the end - sounds bureaucratic, but it's exactly what you describe - a chance to document and verify "hey all, this is why we agreed on, right?" As well as provide that summary to others who missed it. Ultimately way more useful than transcripts and thus always worth it's time - yes one person will spend 20mjn writing it up, but it'll save time of at least 20min times number of people missing or distracted , plus any time that would've been lost due to misalignment or poor memory etc.
Yep thats the normal way. But this can fail on many levels, for instance if the notetaker doesnt understand the problem as well as people talking, they kinda just agree to whatever was written because the thing is still fresh in their mind, then someone who wasnt even there comes to work on the feature a month later and the notes are no good, they need to chase a bunch of people.
Even with a noisy transcript you at least dont loose anything, and everyone can still make notes in an async collaborative way
> stifling peoples comfort to discuss and speak openly
I know some people feel this way, which is why I wouldnt force it on anyone. But I think its a bit silly and they should get over it, were not on the meeting for appearances.
It's not appearances or self consciousness. Have you actually asked people and tried to deeply understand why they don't like it?
It's difference between freely brainstorming with colleagues, and speaking on the formal record that anybody can access at any time under any context or lack thereof for any purpose and with full attribution. No more jokes, informal chit chat, putting out there ideas, or sticking your neck out etc. And linking it to features sounds like a great way to fingerpoint, scapegoat and blame :-(
It's all theoretical and unlikely and paranoid until it inevitably happens :-/
(fwiw, after 20+ years in the field, I am not consenting to recording; and if I do, you'll get the appropriately shortest most formal safest contribution imaginable. Only the things I would be comfortable preceding with "it is the formal position of the company / team to...". Feel free to judge, until or unless you experience or witness the downfall that can be of sufficient magnitude to eliminate all upside of recording :)
Thanks for your post, I understand these issues better now. But I think there still can be some middle ground solution. I struggle with memory, I cant remember what was said on the meeting a few minutes ago. I often have to chase people even if I was there for the note taking because they often lack some context. For the few meetings we did record, I was able to go through it while working to keep the context fresh in my mind constantly. But of course, I would not want to create a situation where that can be abused.
A recorded video can be transcribed and deleted, and the transcript can be anonymised and potentially summarised by an algorithm. I think this could at least lead to better (although much longer) notes, while protecting the participants. What would you think about such tool, if it existed?
Honestly - I still think best solution is to instill culture of meeting notes; yes, first few will suck - they'll either lack crucial detail, context & background; or they'll be overly verbose and hard to read. But like anything else, team/people get better at it - and fast, if team agrees to make it a priority; pick the right people to be designated to collect and send meeting notes, coach them, provide constructive feedback. You can also consider taking turns - once people sit in both shoes (note taker, as well as note consumer), enlightenment and understanding occurs. Bluntly - it feels you perhaps haven't been on receiving end of a good set of meeting notes; it's a skill for sure, but an eminently develop-able one, and will never ever not be useful - even if just for yourself! :)
The technical solution, in my view, would a) not be worthwhile the effort to setup [transcribing and creating summary algorithms - I get that'd be fun, but that's not the same as feasible ;] and b) would have too many points of failure (now we need to both trust it'll delete and anonymize etc). If there was a COTS tool... dunno. Maybe. transcribing is already built into most web meeting software these days, and we value our meeting notes way way way way more.
Thing to understand is - making and sending meeting notes isn't (necessarily:) a burdensome, bureaucratic task that has no technical value; once you've developed the skill, you'll find you're keeping great notes for yourself. I use OneNote, I have a tab for meetings, and every meeting I go to, I keep good notes (I'm a touch typist which helps hugely, to be fair). During and after meeting I cut/trim/organize them. If I need to send them out, it's a few minutes to format them nicely for others. If I don't need to send them, a) They're useful for me to refer to and b) They're useful even if I never refer to them, as I keep track of what's going on during meeting, organize my thoughts, and ask more and better questions because I see the gaps. As we go, I keep bullet points, I order them, make them hierarchical, reorder and so on; frequently I'll screenshare them and it actually makes the meeting better as it prevents looping around, reduces uncertainty, and shows gaps / what's left much more easily.
General solution is to send "meeting notes" at the end - sounds bureaucratic, but it's exactly what you describe - a chance to document and verify "hey all, this is why we agreed on, right?" As well as provide that summary to others who missed it. Ultimately way more useful than transcripts and thus always worth it's time - yes one person will spend 20mjn writing it up, but it'll save time of at least 20min times number of people missing or distracted , plus any time that would've been lost due to misalignment or poor memory etc.