Meeting Software Wishlist

I saw the idea of a “personal CRM” pop up again recently and wanted to jot down some thoughts around software for planning and operating online meetings. This isn’t a fully-considered concept by any means. It’s more of a sketch of the kinds of things I think would be interesting or useful for a tool or tools like this to provide.

I’m thinking of this as something that would be used for personal conversations rather than being used in a business context, but there would likely be a lot of overlap between the requirements for the two.

General

• Conversations can be between two or more people.
  • What changes about the below if we’re having a group conversation rather than just two people?
  • Are there multiple levels? Pair, small group, large group?
• What kind of device is each person using?
  • Different screen sizes, input devices, operating systems
  • Asymmetric capabilities are possible, too

Short Term

Problems

• A memory aid would be great to allow conversations to flow more naturally from topic to topic or to return to a topic after a digression.
• If you want, keeping track of what you discuss, but in a way that allows participants to capture things naturally.
• Creating an artifact with a URL that participants (and maybe others) can reference later.

Ideas

• During the conversation:

  • Bring in the agenda as a guide for people to reference
    • Helps move on to the next topic when you’re ready for it
  • Add notes as you talk
    • This should be some kind of versatile canvas that can accept text, scribbled drawings or doodles, embedded links/media players.
      • I tend to like a neater structure to my notes, so bulleted text with indents generally works for me, but if someone wants to scribble diagonally with their digital pencil, they should be able to. Microsoft OneNote is kind of like what I’m thinking of here, where you can have blocks of multiple types where you would like them.
  • Keep track of topics that have been convered and new ones that come to mind
    • Pushing a topic onto the stack
      • If you get distracted or go down a rabbit hole or just ramble for a long time (as I am known to do), you can get back to the “trunk” of your conversation if you want to
    • Automatic transcription? Do we want to be able to record the audio for later?
      • Can we make a version that mutes my own voice and I just listen to the cool things other people said? 😆
      • Podcast tools like Descript might be able to work in here somehow
      • Recording a conversation changes how people treat it – recording and transcription should definitely be optional and everyone participating should be aware that it’s happening. The Zoom robot that announces “Recording in Progress!” is hilarious, but kind of necessary.

• After the conversation:

  • Output an “artifact” after the conversation is done
    • Google Docs is one way to do this, but it’s dissatisfying in various ways.
    • Ideally this would let you export a file (PDF? Markdown? MP3s? Video playback of notes with audio?) and have a URL for you to come back to after the fact.
  • Tie in with the long-term “personal CRM” piece by adding links to the new conversation artifact and some associated metadata. Also keep track of a rough planning horizon for the next conversation if you pick one.

Long Term

• Keeping track of “contacts” with each person

  • This always feels mechanical to keep track of, but if you want to make sure you’re talking to someone regularly, you need to track it.
  • Could handle a bunch of different sources: Twitter, email, calls, in person, whatever
    • How much detail do we really need? A full text search for everything that the two of you ever discussed is probably overkill, but how do you decide what to keep? Just keep the “meeting artifacts” and other URLs?
    • At minimum, the date, time, and a quick summary or link to an artifact
  • Sending out reminders to participants when it’s been “too long” since the last contact
    • Could help prompt people when time is flying. Or if someone is not available, they could indicate when they might be available again.

• To prepare for the next conversation

  • A parking lot (dumping ground, collection plate) for topics you want to discuss (links, events, products, media, etc.)
  • Who is going to attend?
  • Basically, we need a meeting agenda, but super informal 😛