Simplify Your Meetings with These Tech Tips.



Simplify Your Meetings with These Tech Tips.


My life consists of a lot of meetings. 

I have regular catch-ups with my clients to keep us all on track, both on Zoom and face-to-face for the clients who are based close to me. These can be just 10 minutes or much longer meetings where work is completed whilst on the call. They are the most productive type with really concentrated time on tasks getting so much done! I also organise meetings for clients, so if you want to make your meetings more professional using tech to also make them easier to deal with, you are in the right place!!


I love to use different tech to make my life easier. I'm happy to share some of my better discoveries with you, so you don’t have to waste time on the rubbish stuff! Elon Musk tells his staff to walk out of unproductive meetings unproductive, so I’m here so you can make the most of those times you get everyone to sit down together! Leaked Elon Musk email


Doodle or Calendly?

Scheduling meetings is a time-consuming task I have spent many hours providing for my clients. Getting more than 5 people in a room or Zoom together can be really challenging when everyone is so busy! There is an outlook add-on, FindTime poll, or my favourites, Doodle or Calendly. Doodle is great for getting lots of people to agree on a time, providing a calendar of when everyone is free. 

I use Calendly for people to book in with me, I provide a link with my availability, it looks like this!  It makes everything smoother and more professional for all involved


Fireflies.AI

Lots of people have more Zoom meetings than ever before, after the coronavirus years, so this bit of tech is really a great discovery! Minute-taking is a skilled service that lots of VAs perform, which has suddenly got a lot cheaper for businesses needing a minute-taker to do this for them.

I have been amazed by how detailed the results are, and they are back pretty quickly too. No waiting for days for everything to be collated!

After transcribing your meeting, Fireflies gives you an AI-generated summary, so you can review your long meeting in just 5 minutes.

You can filter your meeting conversations by questions, tasks, metrics, sentiments, and even how long everyone has spoken!

You get an easy-to-digest summary of everything that went on in your meeting as well as action points and how positive or negative people were during. Really useful if you have HR meetings or any committee meetings.

They have different levels, and everyone loves a freebie, right? They have a free option, but you are limited on minutes and transcription credits. If you have a lot of meetings, the paid options are very reasonable, when compared with paying a VA to come and sit in on your meetings.

Also, they have a handy Ask Fred button that will summarise websites or videos.


Otter.ai

What if you don’t have Zoom meetings, what about a face-to-face meeting? Have you looked at Otter.ai before? This isn’t quite as impressive as Fireflies, but it does an excellent job of recording what was said and by whom. It can distinguish different speakers but isn’t quite so good at the regional accents, but it records the audio, so you can go back and listen to what was said. There is a free version again, but it only records in 30-minute stints, you have to start another recording to keep it going! 

Otter.ai also does Zoom meetings. There is a new feature with the otter.ai Zoom meeting, otter.AI chat. The chat keeps tabs on what is said so latecomers or people who didn’t catch a point, can ask questions that are quietly immediately answered by otter.ai in the chat box, stopping the repeated questions from using up valuable time. So clever!

Do you have any tech you like to use that I’ve not covered here? Let me know in the comments, I love to learn about new ways to get more productive! There are so many apps and cloud resources coming out all the time, it’s exciting times if you love tech!


I always think the best way to keep people fresh and keen for your meetings, is to limit the amount and the time of meetings needed, and always think if it can be dealt with by email, do that!


If you would like to work with me and the Tandem team, contact us on:-


hello@tandemvirtualresources.co.uk


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