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Comment by maroonblazer | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of sounding like a shill for "Teams" - a product I generally struggle with - one great feature is the ability to capture notes in real time that everyone in the meeting can see. No screen sharing required. Goes a long way towards ensuring everyone's on the same page with whatever was discussed/outcomes agreed to.

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Problem is not technological. Words are just a bit ambiguous.

“Estimate for X is 5 hours”. Does this estimate only source code change, or full release process with installation to production?

Speech converted to text contains same ambiguities.

People just like to assume that whole group have matching assumptions. (Which have pros and cons)

> “Estimate for X is 5 hours”. Does this estimate only source code change, or full release process with installation to production?

Also is that 50 % chance done in 5 hours, or 90 % chance, or a virtual guarantee? Makes a huge difference to planning yet nobody specifies it.

I wanted to say that this "obviously" means "5 hours median" i.e. 50%, but I just realised my managers and clients would almost always understand this as "I swear on everything I hold dear this will take 5 hours and not a single minute more" (which is why I avoid sharing my estimates publicly). Funny how it works. Great observation, thanks.

These are all questions that managers (in my org) are typically expected to ask. They aren't one-offs, but are critical information to share information between people.

If that's a manual thing then it will work. Automatic transcription won't have the same effect. The trick to this live note taking is that I'm essentially allowing people to read my mind by externalising my thoughts where everyone can see them. The speaker, by correcting or not correcting my externalised thoughts, indicates to everyone whether or not my thoughts match their thoughts.

Right. When I was at IBM they had a 3-day, in-person, course where you learned and practiced facilitation skills. It was a great experience and equipped me with a set of skills I've used and continue to hone to this day.

One of those tools being that you capture/summarize the discussion in a public display that everyone can see. You check in with the group with something like "Does this accurately capture what was just discussed/decided?" Everyone has a chance to refine it to meet their understanding and/or we discover that we're not aligned, which engenders more discussion until we are.

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