A brief guide on how to take the meeting notes

The assumption is that someone would have set up the agenda template for the current meeting.

One way is to log the channel where the SeaMonkey status meeting is taking place and then after the meeting condense the logs into readable notes. The disadvantage of this is that the participants can't check the accuracy of the notes and add corrections or expand points until after you have updated the template with the final notes.

I prefer to edit the template as the meeting progresses editing and saving each section as the discussion moves to the next topic. Logging the channel and/or making sure you have ample scrollback in your IRC client is important for the person taking the notes. One trick I use to reduce the amount of typing I do is to keep a tab open with the section being discussed in edit mode. I then copy chunks of discussion from the scrollback as it progresses and paste into the wiki edit box. As I go along I tidy up the text for grammar, spelling and punctuation. Sometimes to clarify the flow of discussion I indicate who is saying what. Some examples:

• KaiRo created a SeaMonkey Features page and sub-pages for all those that are in development.
• IanN to send an email out on the SeaMonkey-members list on this.
• Meeting Note takers.
  • Ratty is getting rather tired of always doing the meeting notes and hopes that other people would help out occasionally.
  • Ratty to send an email to SeaMonkey-members list summarizing what needs doing and asking for people to share duties.

Action Items should always state who is responsible for each item. For example:

OPEN

• IanN to triage the 2.1-wanted and 2.1-nominated bugs, and move any that are appropriate to 2.2.

Remember to update your own roundtable entry before the meeting starts

And thank you for volunteering to help take the meeting notes.

--Ratty