I always try to send an mail within an hour of a meeting, as a sum up of everything that’s been discussed. It helps both me and the client get 30-60 min talk boiled down to a few sentences and bullet points. Not only do you remind the client of what was decided, you also avoid miscommunication. Even though the client may just browse through the email, it can still act as a sort of evidence for them. So if you actually did miss something, your client may not bring it up later on because he realizes that you didn’t mention it in the e-mail which makes them feel guilty for not reading it :)

It may sound harsh, but some clients are babbling a lot, and getting things in b/w can be very effective – as well as professional.

I also look at it as capturing the sand that falls between the fingers — conveying tone, urgency and perhaps insecurity or indecisiveness on the part of the client. These are all tools of the corporate therapist.

@Steven, I’ll also give this a whirl, thanks for the suggestion :-)

@Cola, reply here and let us know how Audio Note worked for you ;-)

Got any Brut?

@Dave, absolutely! At least you don’t sound like you’re some kind of cockney half-breed from Slough. When I listen back I literally cannot believe people trust me to do ‘business’ things.

To me I sound like someone I’d expect to be selling aftershave out of a suitcase oa London high street.

You get that?

Evernote – I remember crowding round a Mac when that was released, all gasping at the OCR and holding book after book up at the cam heh… but yeah impressive, and again I envy anyone who can use a tablet as an effective note taking method in complex meetings.

I’d love to be able to get along with something like Audionote, I was so excited to try it out – but it just distracted me as much as trying to write… like you I ended up just using the recording facility so thought why not just revert to my trusty old voice recorder.

But oh yes!!! I too have realised how a decent stylus and handwriting-to-text feature would literally be amazing.

Does Bowsh’s stylus seem responsive though? Ive tried one and it kind of lagged a little behind, not to sound ungrateful at the amazing tech behind it, but enough to make it seem way more cumbersome than a pen… I could only write something legible if it was huge letters – am I just a spaz?

If one particular point is long and complex, I’ll write it out in a bit more depth, then carry on with the bullet point approach.

Generally by the time I’ve done listening to the meeting again I’ve captured all the important parts and can just get writing at speed.

Yes it appears like a slow start, and it is, but once done you can practically write non-stop, knowing you’ve captured every bit of detail accurately first time – definite time saver in the long run.

I guess you could argue this is just ‘note taking’ as you should in the meeting… but when a client is talking me through their six staged authorisation process workflow, with all the business-specific rules they’ve adopted over the years – well – I challenge anyone to capture that first time!!

Another app for people to consider is Evernote for those on iOS. It’s my all in one, voice recording, whiteboard snapshot taking and note taking app. It OCR’s your whiteboards to let you find words scribbled on them when searching too (depending on the legibility of your scribble).

Although now wearing off a little, the novelty of someone bringing an iPad to the meeting and recording the audio also helps with the acceptance on the client side. Initially it was the opening 10 minutes of my recordings taken up with iPad discussions.

Someone at Rawnet (Bowsh) recently bought a stylus so I’m now in search of the app that has handwriting recognition as well as audio recordings.

However, completely agree, would never dream of a client meeting without asking to record any more!

It’s finding the time to go back over and listen to them that’s the drag but then again, so is trying to decipher what the hell I’ve written, days afterwards.

Must check out the iPad aps you suggest – cheers pal!