Re: Taking notes

[Rose Wilcox <RWILC -at- FAST -dot- DOT -dot- STATE -dot- AZ -dot- US>]

Robbie Rupel wrote:
>P.S. At a previous job, I too had someone say that they were glad I
>wasd there to take notes. Much to their surprise, I took
>terrible notes (I made it a point to be active in the discussions and
>"forgot" to write things down). I was not asked to take notes again.

We had a similar situation here.  We had a team of three contract technical
writers.  Two of us started in September and the first one (who had started
in June)  had agreed to take notes at meetings.   The meetings in question
were general project meetings about what is going on with the various teams,
how we're making progress towards our project plan, and what problems were
having.  The two of us who started later were not willing to do this, and we
went to management and pointed out that not only that it wasn't fair to us,
but that since we were to take part in the discussions, that we might miss
some things. We also said the notes would be skewed towards our points of
view.

The managers decided we would *all* (developers, managers, DBAs, writers,
Help Desk personnel) take turns taking notes, using a MS Word template
designed for reporting on meetings.  Well, it turned out that the manager
who runs the meeting takes the notes now.  They found it so easy to use the
template, that it was simpler for them to just take the notes themselves.
Thus the notes reflect management's point of view, which is more appropriate
for that type of meeting.