Quite a while back, I realized that anything digital, from phones to computers, tends to become or look like very official/non-personal and hence looks bad, especially in 1:1 meetings. I decided to go with pen and paper, in a simple Notebook (A5 or A7 is my choice). I’m do not write anything personal, but the points shared or noted down between us are enough to remind me of any points that I might have noted in my mind.

I’ve carried this habit to many other meetings (non-1:1s too), even when there is a note-taker (AI or otherwise). My meeting notes usually get shared or used as references by other participants.

Even during the meetings, other participant(s) sometimes contribute to my notes. I don’t hate digital mediums; in fact, I have used Freeform on an iPad just like I use my Notebook for meeting notes.

The interesting part is that I learnt to draw like Dan Roam[1] quite a while back. So, my notes contain texts with a lot of arrows, stick figures, shapes, etc.

Sidenote: A lot of conversations got sidetracked to discussions about paper, fountain pens, the way I write, etc.

1. https://www.danroam.com

Here’s the issue - all my meetings have confidential, sensitive info. I can’t use a version you host (or well, I could, but you won’t be willing to do the 6 month security review I need).

Can you give me a version I can host (or run locally) and I give you some $ one time or per year?

That said, I, of course, always welcome competition.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMoGOWOBicY

[2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/facilitator-in-mi...

[3] https://aka.ms/facilitator

You're in a ton of regular meetings, and you and want to take notes and actions to keep track of what's going on in them week to week.

Almost as good as Emacs Org mode. I use Org mode with Evil, to get VIM keybindings. This way I can quickly navigate and edit the document, not just append to the end of it. And of course, Emacs is completely local.

I suppose there is supposed to be a collaborative element that Emacs won't provide. In my experience people in meetings already have workflows and are seldom interested in using the tool somebody else asks them to.

One point of (hopefully) constructive feedback is that it wasn't obvious from my first interaction with the temporary doc that I was able to create checklists and bullet points. Once I saw that those are possible, I quickly guessed the keystrokes, but it might be helpful to add some graphical guidance.

I'd love a help button or keyboard shortcut to show keyboard shortcuts.

Thanks!

edit: I figured out the action, with putting [] first. But that was an educated guess based on some other comment here that said actions were checkboxes and me knowing more about Markdown than maybe your average meeting notetaker.

Also, I use pen and a notebook. It is better than anything electronic, since we are monkeys and using our eye-hand coordination has proven effects on concentration and learning.

But I agree with the other commenter about taking handwritten notes. I use pencil and paper and type them up into org-mode afterwards.

Also shout-out to Attendee which is OSS for building meeting bots https://github.com/attendee-labs/attendee