It’s a fairly regular occurrence when we cover meetings: an attendee or participant, having noticed the rapporteur typing away in the corner throughout the proceedings, comes over and asks if it might be possible to get a copy of those notes. The answer is always the same: our company has a policy against it.

Now this might seem like an odd policy. After all, why not try to be as accommodating as possible, especially when it’s a client making the request?

There are a couple of reasons. First, not all of our writers would be equally comfortable sharing their raw, unedited notes. Our guidelines protect those who aren’t.

More important, though, is our overarching philosophy of never showing a client anything raw. Nothing, not even a preliminary outline, ever leaves our hands without a second person reading and editing it. Polish is part of our professional reputation, as it should be for all publications managers.

But we do understand that clients sometimes want summaries of important decisions right away. That’s why we offer something that Dana Trevas, one of our rapporteurs, has dubbed “real-time reporting.” If we know that service is what the clients want, and we can work with them to make a few small adjustments to their meeting procedures, we can hand over something polished within half an hour of an event’s end.

Posted in Presentations and meeting coverage