I’ve been saving for a new Apple iPad Air for months. A week before leaving for the AIA National Convention in June, I pulled the trigger and ordered my newest toy with 32 MB of storage in Space Gray. It would be useful to complete my responsibilities as a jury member for the Architectural Business Plan Competition and allow me to prepare for my presentations at the convention.
I’m happy to say that the device performed as well as expected and today I am using the iPad to complete my daily routines. I manage my email, access my files on Dropbox and take notes during project meetings.
For project meeting minutes, I use Evernote. My long term plan is to migrate all my project files to the app, but so far, I am only using it for personal notes, Entrepreneur Architect records and meeting minutes for my Fivecat Studio projects.
Project meeting minutes are a very important part of managing an architectural project. It is the only record of project status and can be used as a weekly meeting agenda.
In Evernote I have created a separate notebook for each active project. In each notebook, I have added a Meeting Minutes note and add each consecutive record in one note. At the beginning of each meeting, I add the date and list the notes below. I then send an email directly from Evernote to all participants at the meeting. At the next meeting, I open the same note, review my bullets from the previous meeting and list the new notes for the current meeting immediately below. All the information is there in a single note. Simple, and easy to use. That’s the way we want to build our systems.
Having my minutes recorded to Evernote allows me to quickly access my records using any device with an internet connection.
Do you record meeting minutes at every project meeting? How do you keep track of your minutes documents?
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Photo Credit: kentoh / 123RF Stock Photo
I love Evernote and use it daily for my projects, but I find actually taking note is evernote kind of frustrating. Most recently I have been using an app called Workflowy for note taking and meeting minutes. It is a text based application that uses bullet point formatting that are collapsible. It is hard to fully explain in a blog comment, so I suggest taking a quick look at it pretty cool.
Craig, thanks for the feedback. I’ve used Workflowy and love it. For me, it’s a bit TOO simple 🙂 The biggest reason I prefer Evernote is that I can integrate all my notes, business and personal, all in one place. Evernote also has a great search function.
Are you “typing” your notes into Evernote? I tried that for a while, and then I went back to handwritten notes that I photograph into Evernote using my iPhone. I don’t have one continuous meeting note for a given project, but I do have easily searchable notes in each project notebook (which I have also, as you suggested). It’s great that my notes are then available on my phone, iPad, PCs, Mac, etc…anywhere I have the Evernote app.
I am typing quick short notes, then cleaning them up immediately after the meeting.
I use Evermore for everything. I post emails from outlook, web research, photos, and screen shots all with the click of a button. I even talk to it to create daily to-do lists. I recently upgraded to Premium so I don’t need an internet connection to access plus searchable with key words. Exploring interface with other programs/apps and collaboration function. Love reminder tool and sync function connecting all my devices regardless of operating platform.
Mark, I have used Evernote extensively for meeting notes a couple of years now. I enjoy how it it syncs up with my phone and office computer. I can also start a note with the iPad in a meeting, and move out to the field continuing the note with my Phone. I also use it for Field report notes using the phone camera, because it gives me the ability to mark up the photo using skitch. This has essentially replaced my day book as my main note taking process… The note files can be filed into the project later or formalized into published documents.
By the way, Evernote is a terrific way to do punch lists. I create a Room List in Revit and export it to Evernote just to tee things up, then when walking the space I can use my phone to dictate my comments in a bulleted list under each room name and number. After I’m done, it’s a cinch to email it to the Contractor and Owner.
Randy
Can you be a bit more explicit about how you actually do this. Does Evernote transcribe your audio into text? Are you combining Evernote with another app to do this?
Evernote transcribes my dictation directly into text. I do this with an iPhone, so dictating text is generally an option with just about any entry app that involves text. I will note that you do have to have internet access, because speech recognition currently is an online process (as opposed to all of the “dictionaries” being resident in the phone itself). Most of the time this isn’t a problem, but I did have a project in central NH where the signal was so poor I had to go back to typing the text. Even that wasn’t particularly hard, though.
I start the process by pre-loading the list of room names and numbers so I can then go to a bulleted list under each room.
Thanks, big help
I use a combination of evernote and hand for meeting notes.
Notes are hand written on paper or the drawing I am reviewing and then scaned or photographed and put into evernote. All meeting notes are now searchable with the handwrighting recognition and available anytime.
There is a limit to the number of folders you can create in evernote but not tags. I have a meeting note folder and then tag the note with the project number
I do the same thing with call notes and punch list too.
I guess the next logical question is: Is anyone successfully integrating dictated notes using Dragon Dictation?
I tried the free version of evernote, but I really like “Notes Plus” a lot better after I saw another architect using it in a meeting. I use it with an Adonit “Jot Script” stylus, which has a small pressure sensitive point and communicates with your ipad using bluetooth. For me, cursive writing works the best. You can save stuff to Google drive and import PDF’s. I haven’t tried the text recognition, but don’t really need it. The Jot Script uses a AAA battery which is readily available and lasts a very long time.
For minutes I use a livescribe pen which allows me to hand write notes which are linked to an audio file. The pen automatically syncs the handwritten notes as PDFs and the audio files to my Evernote account when I connect to wifi. It would be even better if it could turn the handwriting into typed text, but that function is unfortunately not available. If I am just making a few of my own notes (when someone else is minuting the meeting) I type directly to Evernote.
I have also used dragon dictation for punch lists and find it works pretty well. I might be a bit slower on site, but overall time is saved as I don’t have to spend ages typing it up when I get back to the office.
I like your use of Evernote. Our method was very similar using Dropbox to hold an Agenda document for the upcoming meeting. After the meeting, the decisions and new issues were added to the agenda in bold font and it was re-saved as ‘Minutes’. We emailed a PDF of the minutes to everyone affected. For the next meeting, we took the previous minutes doc, renamed a new copy ‘Agenda”, cleaned it up and started over.
Each version was named Agenda or Minutes followed by the date of the meeting in YYYYMMDD format so that they sorted chronologically. All these files could always be found in the project subfolder named “AgendaMinutesNotes”.
This worked pretty well for us, but Evernote would be cheaper with virtually no limit to amount of storage. You can edit/create notes on the go with Evernote – not yet with Dropbox. Evernote can add a picture to your note or an audio clip. The integrated mark-up tool makes it a snap to start a note about, say, a field condition, add a picture of the condition and mark it up with your comments. Then email it. I don’t know of any other multi-purpose app that can do that.
Oh yeah, handwriting. Since Evernote acquired Penultimate, you can do what John mentions and integrate those handwritten notes/sketches into your Evernote project notebook.
The only problem I have found with Evernote is that the Microsoft folder concept is awfully ingrained, so it takes some effort to adopt a different paradigm for record keeping.
I also use evernote for meeting notes and my field notes. I found a cool android app called Everform (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sika524.android.everform&hl=en) for making templates on your device. I use it on tablet and phone.
Makes it easier to start my notes and remember to collect the right information.
Another thing I have started doing with evernote is making an agenda or “need to talk to you about” list. I have a folder called “agenda”. I make a note in it for anyone I need to have a conversation or question for. When ever I run into them I can check my list. The list can be links to other notes in evernote.