Really don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. Getting a transcript and summary of an hour long meeting that you weren’t at is so much easier than relying on someone taking and sending you notes.
If you get sufficient value out of a 30 second summary of an hour long meeting, then why have the hour long meeting?
(h)(n) + (t)(p) = W
(h length of meeting in hours) x (n number of people in the meeting) + (t number of hours prepping the meeting) x (p number of people prepping the meeting) = W number of work hours spent on this meeting. Multiply W by the average hourly wage. That’s how much money the meeting cost. And that doesn’t factor in the cost of productivity loss because everybody could’ve been doing something useful with that time instead.
If it could’ve otherwise been ten minutes of writing an email and five minutes per worker reading and understanding it, then how is it anything other than an efficiency gain to just make that meeting an email? Instead, we’re still putting the meeting together just to then pay in resources and possibly subscription cost to have the meeting summarized instead of just having the host do it in the first place.
Just an off-the-cuff example, a business review with a client. I’m involved in making the deck that’s being shown, so I already know the talking points from our side; the only thing that’s relevant to me is the client’s response. The meeting might be 45 minutes of us presenting and 15 minutes of them responding, so if I can get a quick summary of those responses, I can save all that time.
Because this user didn’t attend. Meetings are generally long form and dynamic. Which can’t be done as efficiently in email. 30-60 minutes meetings are fine to attend in person (in terms of parsing information). Consuming that same information via video after the fact is a chore; as is relying on the note taking skills of another employee. I agree with the user you’re replying to. Note taking is one of the few things AI is decent at.
Okay, but imagine if everybody just didn’t attend. If the quick notes summarizing the meeting are enough for everybody, then the meeting is a waste of time.
If nobody attended, what would be getting summarised? I get what you’re saying, I’ve definitely been in organisations that had pointless meetings. “This meeting could have been an email” is a meme for a reason. Others though, it’s where different departments come together and share news/status, different executive/managers give run downs and updates about the company (e.g. chief of ops presents figures and areas that could be improved) and employees can ask questions about these or other pertinent topics.
This is all very true, and I agree completely. But you’ve overlooked two very important factors that I can think of:
Many people attending these meetings do not have the authority to cancel them, and the people who do have the authority may not be receptive to this argument.
Some people will benefit from assisted notetaking even if the meeting was worthy of the time.
I’m neurodivergent and when I’m writing notes my brain shuts off audio processing. I literally can’t take notes without missing more of the meeting than I’m writing down. And unfortunately most people above me in the hierarchy can’t fathom writing a message instead of speaking for an hour.
yeah. I had a 5 hour QBR this week with 18 in-person attendees and 7 virtual where we didn’t even take a pee break. I was presenting 90% of it so it’s hard to take my own notes. I give AI the transcript, the virtual note taker, and the slide deck and my personal notes and describe how I want the output and it gives me a recap of the highlights, discussion, action items that then I can email to stakeholders and to project mgmt to set up next step tasks in Asana.
at my last client’s they used SAFe, which basically means they do “big agile”. in practice, this meant that every tenth week was “meeting week”. five days of only retrospectives and planning meetings, including an all-hands with over 400 engineers at once. i wish we had virtual note takers that worked.
that’s the fun part about working in old european industry: we get six weeks, but everyone has to take them at the same time, and at that time the factory just… shuts down.
…virtual note takers? we don’t even write our own fucking notes anymore?..
edit:
Okay, okay, I get it :D AI indeed has some uses.
Turning meetings into emails in the least efficient manner
You get meetings and emails! Just imagine the productivity!
Once you get high enough in corporate hell, all work is meetings and e-mails about meetings. There is nothing else.
Ngl, it’s actually pretty handy.
Really don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. Getting a transcript and summary of an hour long meeting that you weren’t at is so much easier than relying on someone taking and sending you notes.
Here, you can use mine. hands you my notebook full of furry porn sketches and stories
Ohh, you actually pay attention at meetings? Oof. … So what do you think of my latest character?
Why does it have three…? You know what, never mind.
I mean, I’ll take that notebook. Pass it over.
If you get sufficient value out of a 30 second summary of an hour long meeting, then why have the hour long meeting?
(h)(n) + (t)(p) = W
(h length of meeting in hours) x (n number of people in the meeting) + (t number of hours prepping the meeting) x (p number of people prepping the meeting) = W number of work hours spent on this meeting. Multiply W by the average hourly wage. That’s how much money the meeting cost. And that doesn’t factor in the cost of productivity loss because everybody could’ve been doing something useful with that time instead.
If it could’ve otherwise been ten minutes of writing an email and five minutes per worker reading and understanding it, then how is it anything other than an efficiency gain to just make that meeting an email? Instead, we’re still putting the meeting together just to then pay in resources and possibly subscription cost to have the meeting summarized instead of just having the host do it in the first place.
Just an off-the-cuff example, a business review with a client. I’m involved in making the deck that’s being shown, so I already know the talking points from our side; the only thing that’s relevant to me is the client’s response. The meeting might be 45 minutes of us presenting and 15 minutes of them responding, so if I can get a quick summary of those responses, I can save all that time.
Sure, but you know how else you could give that information to the client and have them respond back?
By emailing the deck and asking for their thoughts.
We don’t really need to coordinate having an hour window in everybody’s schedule anymore.
Reading through a random deck is not remotely the same as watching a presentation
I find the summaries pretty worthless but a transcript is super useful
Because this user didn’t attend. Meetings are generally long form and dynamic. Which can’t be done as efficiently in email. 30-60 minutes meetings are fine to attend in person (in terms of parsing information). Consuming that same information via video after the fact is a chore; as is relying on the note taking skills of another employee. I agree with the user you’re replying to. Note taking is one of the few things AI is decent at.
Okay, but imagine if everybody just didn’t attend. If the quick notes summarizing the meeting are enough for everybody, then the meeting is a waste of time.
If nobody attended, what would be getting summarised? I get what you’re saying, I’ve definitely been in organisations that had pointless meetings. “This meeting could have been an email” is a meme for a reason. Others though, it’s where different departments come together and share news/status, different executive/managers give run downs and updates about the company (e.g. chief of ops presents figures and areas that could be improved) and employees can ask questions about these or other pertinent topics.
This is all very true, and I agree completely. But you’ve overlooked two very important factors that I can think of:
I’m neurodivergent and when I’m writing notes my brain shuts off audio processing. I literally can’t take notes without missing more of the meeting than I’m writing down. And unfortunately most people above me in the hierarchy can’t fathom writing a message instead of speaking for an hour.
If I could trust it to consider the same points important that I do and have the same understanding of them.
They merely report what was said, nothing (much) more, nothing less.
Literally one of the only good apllications for AI.
Really?? All the AI note takers I’ve seen suck farts.
The fans can just use regular air from the room to cool the computer. You don’t actually need to fart into them.
yeah. I had a 5 hour QBR this week with 18 in-person attendees and 7 virtual where we didn’t even take a pee break. I was presenting 90% of it so it’s hard to take my own notes. I give AI the transcript, the virtual note taker, and the slide deck and my personal notes and describe how I want the output and it gives me a recap of the highlights, discussion, action items that then I can email to stakeholders and to project mgmt to set up next step tasks in Asana.
The one benefit of AI I’ve actually found useful.
Transcribing meetings is quite useful if you want to quickly check something later on.
Summarizing that is useful to get the gist of it if you missed the meeting.
at my last client’s they used SAFe, which basically means they do “big agile”. in practice, this meant that every tenth week was “meeting week”. five days of only retrospectives and planning meetings, including an all-hands with over 400 engineers at once. i wish we had virtual note takers that worked.
“So I’m going to need every 10th week as a vacation… I’m out of vacation days? Well regardless, I’m not showing up.”
that’s the fun part about working in old european industry: we get six weeks, but everyone has to take them at the same time, and at that time the factory just… shuts down.
Oh wow that really sucks.
could be worse
You ever listen to a whole meeting? Not for me!