Professional Minutes/Pre-recorded Tape Transcription Upload your audio files here!Minutes:
In these days of corporate governance, using a skilled professional has become paramount. Your Client Media DVD - Transcripts Plus can now provide you with a DVD containing the digital audio of your meeting (assuming it was recorded) and the minutes for historical and reference purposes. The audio can be replayed on the left-hand side, and the minutes are contained on the right-hand side of the same user-friendly screen. A compact miracle of high technology!
DigiShortTM We now provide a new service - DigiShortTM - where we click with a special purpose pen on our shorthand notes, and the ROOM AUDIO corresponding to those same pen shorthand notes can be instantly played back! That's right, the speakers' exact words play back through speakers in the pen by clicking a pen on the shorthand symbols on paper. Imagine the benefits to you when seeking clarification about a motion or discussion! INTERPRETED MEETINGS: if we were receiving via headphones the English from the interpreter, where another language was being spoken in a meeting, we could instantly (1) play back the room audio words as spoken in the other language by clicking on our English shorthand symbols (as our pen picked up the room audio); or (2) read the English equivalent by reading the shorthand notes of the words interpreted into English. Such a unique service would assist many interpreted meetings where clarification was being sought. Truly awesome technology at your service. Here is a picture of our special paper and pen:
Realtime Minutes: Our latest cutting-edge, unique service, allows us to compile the minutes AS a meeting is being held. Using our stenomask device we create the minutes in realtime, voice summarising discussions as they happen, with speaker identification if required, into a mini soundbooth device (stenomask.) This is fed into a digital recording system. The minutes are then transcribed using our speech recognition system into Word. Thus, we do not need to listen to hours of recordings to compile minutes, as they are already created, and merely need editing. The following copyrighted article by Transcripts Plus, appeared in the Chartered Secretaries Australia magazine Keeping Good Companies:
Minutes as a legal document How best to capture the essence of a meeting Minutes as a historical record The human mind is a strange piece of apparatus. Ask a group of witnesses to an accident if they can describe what happened and you would receive quite different responses. Why? Our memory is so very selective in both its perception and remembrance. However, when a group of people meet to discuss a series of business items there must he some mechanism that enables all to be able to agree about not only what was discussed, but also, most importantly, what was decided upon. To overcome this, minutes were evolved, and serve, when passed, as the final arbiter. Minutes. That paperwork which comprises the minutes, noted during, and formally prepared at the end of a meeting, is the impetus to action, the force majeure for the next step in a business's plan of attack. But it is also an important historical record and a legal document, recognised as a contract of agreement between people, and this is something that we often forget. They are important to incorporated associations, company shareholders and other bodies, besides those who are on a board itself. For those who read minutes, it is rare indeed to actually consider what is entailed in capturing the essence of a meeting, and that the work involved in doing so, accurately, requires quite a skill that not everyone possesses, or even, perhaps, wants to possess? Types of minutes There are basically three types of minutes: (1) those that merely include introductory remarks to an item and an action outcome; (2) minutes of narration, which include introductory remarks, key discussion points (to assist in understanding how a decision was made) and actions or outcomes. Finally, (3), minutes of resolution, purely the actions/outcomes, and nothing else. Minutes of narration are easily the most comprehensive in that they cover every possibility and, depending on their format, can enable one to easily break them down further so that the bare essentials can perhaps evenbe published on the Internet. There is a vast difference between 'taking a few notes' at a meeting and professionally prepared minutes, for minutes, as noted, are alegal document and, as such, great care should be taken in their preparation and final signing off. What to include in the minutes What to actually include in the minutes is perhaps best summarised as what one should never leave out. Section 251A of the Corporations Act sets out the requirements of a company to maintain a set of minutes where proceedings and resolutions are clearly set out. The case law arising from court proceedings informs that minutes are not meant to include all that was said at a meeting, and thus are not meant to read as a 'who said what'; although in certain rare instances this can be very useful where a particular meeting needs to know where a particular proposal came from. The absolutely essential ingredients, if you like, must include:
The above points represent the skeleton, and no minutes should exclude any of them. Items included under key issues would include notation such as if a vote was taken and a board member was absent; a board member's request to have something particularly noted; points of clarification that relate to previous minutes and so forth. Some quarters indicate that Motions which have lapsed, discussion, reports to the board from a committee, names of the mover and Seconder or voting trends on a motion and so forth, are not necessary. However, they are invaluable in many instances, but not all. As an example,if I were to stick to this style with some of the organisations by which I am engaged, the minutes would merely record 'discussion ensued' under each item. Not every organisation has the need to generate motions, and quite a few meetings I attend are essentially a fact-finding and reporting exercise. As such, many organisations are greatly assisted if something more than the bare bones are included. From my experience of over ten years of providing professional minutes, if you have the skill and capability to encapsulate, in concise form, the key discussion points, this greatly aids an organisation in not only understanding how decisions were reached, but why, with the ability to remove them quickly and easily if you were, for instance, publishing a summary. In this era of corporate governance, the 'why' can be crucial to those who will be holding positionson a board or committee in years to come, and even more so where disputes may occur. Call them 'significant events' if you like, but they can be very valuable to include in the minutes. However, it can be extremely difficult for someone to be able to accurately note such points without assistance from useful tools such as shorthand. A tape recording may be utilised, of course, but it's a very inefficient and time-consuming methodology as it requires transcribing afterwards. Laptops are fine if you are merely recording the skeleton, but unless one is a very competent typist, it can inconvenience a meeting. Format of the minutes The actual format of the minutes is something that varies from organisation to organisation, but suffice to say it must be consistent and clear. I have devised a particular format which seems to meet the needs of all clients and, as such, enables me to create detailed minutes, and, if necessary, break them down quickly and easily into a mere summary. Minutes should always be written in the third person, and as such the style should be impersonal and objective in character. Concomitant with this, the writer should be adopting an impartial approach to the meeting. In fact, he or she is the 'silent one' who usually, if performing a purpose or specific function, does not get involved by making comments on the issues being discussed. Action list An action list lifted from the minutes is very valuable and, if one can be developed during the meeting in a separate document, this can be distributed at the end of the meeting. Certainly, a separate action list included at the back of the minutes is fundamentally sound. The historical record Sadly, and quite inexplicably, the value of minutes seems to be grossly underplayed in Australia, for they can be, depending on how well they are done, more than a record of what was discussed and what actions were taken. The minutes can throw light on the planning process of an organisation and even the management style; how issues have evolved over time; what persons were seen to be actively involved and perhaps even how they performed; the inner workings of an organisation and how it faces up to making decisions; a useful tool to enlighten new board members on what has gone on in the past; and what can or should be developed into the future. This and much more can be obtained from the minutes, but few, if any, realise the potential and real power they carry. This devolves high responsibility to the person designated with the task. Ideally, as mentioned earlier, that person should be independent of the meeting, thus ensuring there are no hidden slantings or innuendos to gain favour in some direction or other. As the old saying goes, the detail is in the fine print. Even the briefest minutes can reveal something at least about the inner sanctum of an organisation. Perhaps the fact the minutes are too brief says something that might cause shareholders to shudder with fright. I have worked for many and varied organisation over the years, and for some perhaps odd reason I actually like creating a form of order from what can be, in some instances, termed almost verbal overflow, and presenting a concise depiction of what actually happened when a group of human beings decided to get together and discuss a series of issues. Suffice to say, the art of taking minutes, let alone its importance, is not always fully appreciated. As noted earlier, minutes are a historical record,and as such should be relied on in the fullness of time to shed light on the inner workings and thoughts of an organisation. Naturally, from time to time there is, of course, the necessity to have in-camera discussions, but this also is part and parcel of the procedural processes laid down within an organisation. Minutes have, and always will be, an essential ingredient of the make-up of any meeting, and their importance should never be underestimated. Adrian Kelly worked as a court and Hansard reporter for many years before bringing his experience of very diverse meetings, and subjects, to the formation of a business that provides professional minutes of meetings, as well as detailed summary reports of focus groups, brain storming exercises, and verbatim transcripts. He can be contacted on www.transcriptsplus.com.au or (03) 9859 0533." Tape transcriptions:
FORMAT Documents can be provided in the following formats:
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