This article originally appeared in the Editorial Advantage newsletter.

The session has been taped, and now it’s your job to produce a summary for those who missed the session, didn’t take notes, or just didn’t get it. The task of summarizing can be daunting; but once you learn how it’s done, you’ll be able to turn a 90-minute conference session into a publishable paper in an afternoon. Here are a few ways to make the process go smoothly:

1. Remember, you are not transcribing. If the speaker on your tape digresses or repeats him/herself (as good public speakers often do), rest your fingers. Summaries are not verbatim.
2. If the speaker’s meaning is not completely clear, stop, rewind, and puzzle out the meaning. Write your coherent paragraph, and then move on. This may seem slow at the time, but it’s far quicker than having to rewind the tape later to find that troublesome place again.
3. PowerPoints and a speaker’s own written notes can be helpful, but don’t feel bound by their language or the way they’re organized. Rewrite and move thoughts around to make everything as clear as possible.
4. Add subheads as you go. Subheads make a long paper more readable and will make it easier to reorganize your final draft if you decide to.
5. Take breaks. Ten minutes every hour. Trust me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Presentations and meeting coverage No Comments »

This article originally appeared in the Editorial Advantage newsletter.

Event organizers sometimes need a verbatim transcript of a speaker’s presentation or proceedings. Cece Whitaker, a professional transcriber, answers FAQs about ways to get a transcript prepared accurately, on time, for a reasonable price.

Q: What’s the best way to find a transcription service?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Presentations and meeting coverage No Comments »

By Mitchell Beer, CMM, and Woody Huizenga, CMM. This article originally appeared in the Editorial Advantage newsletter.

The meetings industry has been through quite a journey over the past few years, as planners and suppliers have tried to gauge the relative merits of live and virtual meetings.

But while the choice of venue is largely resolving itself, there may still be hurdles ahead, if we hope to make consultations as useful as they can be for host organizations—and as meaningful as they should be for participants.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Presentations and meeting coverage 1 Comment »

This article originally appeared in the Editorial Advantage newsletter.

Writing, like every other profession, has its specialists: novelist, publicist, poet, essayist. The rapporteur is one such specialist. Organizations hire them to meet the need—and sometimes the legal requirement—for accurate reports of meetings.

Publication and program managers sometimes casually assign any willing and available staff person to be a meeting’s rapporteur: to sit through a meeting and then write a report of what transpired. But these same managers, after spending hours editing and re-writing the results, are now concluding that the job of rapporteur has its own set of specialized professional requirements.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Presentations and meeting coverage No Comments »

This article originally appeared in the Editorial Advantage newsletter.
How quickly do you need to write up the decisions made during a meeting? Instantly, if the participants are addressing important topics and there’s no room for error.

With a full agenda, it’s easy to gloss over important details in an effort to move the meeting along. Members can agree to a proposed action in a spirit of collegiality without fully absorbing its meaning. Later on, they may wonder, “Is that really what we agreed to do? Is that recommendation even feasible?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Presentations and meeting coverage 1 Comment »

This article originally appeared in the Editorial Advantage newsletter.

Companies that are serious about complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are implementing controls against fraud. But do their meeting minutes reflect their commitment?

The internal control framework established by the private sector’s Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (followed by most companies and auditors) assigns specific responsibilities in that vein to both the board of directors and the audit committee.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Presentations and meeting coverage No Comments »