Readers often complain that meeting minutes hide nuggets of action and decision inside wordy, often useless, text.  In this one-day workshop, you'll discover how to condense meeting hours to minutes--minutes that meet the needs of today's reader-in-a-rush. 

Topics include preparing to take notes, gathering and organizing the raw material, writing clearly and concisely, formatting the final draft, and indexing minutes for quick recovery.  With guidance from the instructor, you will think through and create your own unique tools for these tasks. 

Before the Meeting:
• Identifying your readers.
• Defining the purpose of your meeting notes.
• Predicting what information your readers will need.
• Designing note-taking aids.

During the Meeting:
• Boosting note-taking speed.
• The note-taker's proper role: just seen, or seen and heard.
• Recognizing group decisions without motions.
• What about tape recorders?
• Handling digressions.
• How to participate and record simultaneously.

After the Meeting:
• Selecting final content: how to decide relevance.
• Presenting material in a readable format.
• Verbal shortcuts for repetitive idea patterns.
• Increasing readability.
• Retrieving key information with easy-to-maintain indexes.

1. Learn what readers really need and want in their minutes.
2. Save time by taking notes efficiently.
3. Know what to keep and what to omit from your final minutes.
4. Clear up questions by writing clearly and concisely.
5. Format your minutes so people will read them.
6. Index the minutes so you can find things later.