Clerks and Recorders make producing meeting minutes easy. Is it?
No, it's a tedious process that contains a bunch of elements to produce the perfect set of meeting minutes. This makes me think that Clerk and Recorders have a bit of magic in them: being able to meticulously produce meeting minutes time after time, share it to the board and the residents and keep the municipality running. What we do know for certain is that producing meeting minutes is a long process - sometimes multiple hours to produce one set of meeting minutes. That’s where meeting minutes AI tool steps in, offering a game-changer for Clerk and Recorders, because we all only have 24 hours in a day.
If you’re wondering how AI can transform your approach to meeting minutes and how to get started, this guide breaks it down.
5 Key Benefits of Using Meeting Minutes AI Tool
Save Time and Boost Efficiency
Manually recording and typing meeting minutes can eat up hours, especially for long or complex sessions. Checking the recording, matching written notes to time stamps, deciphering hand writing… AI tools can transcribe speech in real time, summarize key points, and format minutes automatically. This means Clerks can focus on higher value tasks, while the AI handles the heavy lifting.
Improve Accuracy
Even the most experienced Clerk can occasionally miss a key detail or mishear a statement. It's human. AI tools, especially those with advanced transcription capabilities, excel at capturing spoken words from different speakers with precision. AI platforms may also allow draft meeting minutes that can be edited, ensuring the final minutes are polished and error-free.
Ensure Compliance
Municipalities operate under strict national, state and local regulations, and accurate record-keeping is non-negotiable. Nowadays, making meeting minutes and agenda packs available digitally is vital. Most municipal websites have the capacity to handle those as a downloadable PDF document. Meeting minutes AI tool can help local municipalities meet compliance standards, automatically timestamping records and archiving minutes for easy retrieval. This minimizes the risk of accidental non-compliance and creates a clear audit trail.
Enhance Collaboration
AI-powered tools often come with cloud-based platforms, enabling team members to collaborate in real time. Clerks, council members, and Administrators can review or edit agendas or meeting minutes together, even if they’re working remotely. This reduces the ongoing-back-and-forth emails-with-different-threads-and-needing-to-make-sense-of-it.
Adapt to Any Meeting Size or Format
Whether it’s a quick committee meeting or an all-day council session, AI for meeting minutes can scale to meet the challenge. They’re capable of transcribing multiple speakers, distinguishing voices, and even summarizing discussions, making them suitable for all kinds of municipal meetings.
How to Implement AI for Meeting Minutes
Getting started with AI to help with meeting minutes, but it’s simpler than you think. Here’s three steps to start you on the path.
Rule 1: Make Use of Free Trials to Try the Tool for Yourself
Research and compare! Find and experiment with different tools. Making use of free trials means you can test the meeting minutes AI tool and its features for yourself to create meeting minutes for different meetings. Some even offer a referral campaign that can gain you more free time, if you share it with colleagues. Invite your team to experiment with it, so you can gather feedback and determine if it fits your needs.
Rule 2: Start Small
Sign up for a month or for a program that allows you to cancel after the trial period. Use and try the features on all the AI for meeting minutes programs to establish which one gives you the best meeting minutes.
Rule 3: Ask for Support
Even the most intuitive AI tools require some training for optimal use. Take advantage of onboarding resources offered by the vendor, such as tutorials, personalized demos or even webinars. Familiarize yourself with the support team. Understanding how it works and what they can help you with, will help you optimize the access you have. And, ask questions! No question is a silly question.
Adopting AI for meeting minutes doesn’t have to be complicated. You’ll thank your future self when you are able to produce comprehensive meeting minutes in a faster, more efficient way. AI for meeting minutes is a valuable asset for municipalities of any size. By starting small, making use of free trials, and tapping into the support infrastructure you can integrate AI into your municipal workflows—and free up more time to focus on serving your community.
Written by: Nelet Kok