Systematic minutes, at every session

The problem is not the writing, it is the regularity

A board produces minutes when someone takes it on. The format changes with the person, the delay varies, and informal sessions produce none at all. This is not a competence problem: whoever chairs cannot record, and whoever records does not take part.

The aim is therefore not to write better, it is to write every time, the same way, without depending on anyone’s availability.

Making recording a rule

Three decisions are enough, and each is taken once.

Write recording into how the body operates. One line in the internal rules or the committee charter: sessions are recorded for the purpose of drawing up the minutes. Everyone knows on entering, and the question stops being asked.

Name who records. The session secretary, or failing that whoever chairs. One person, to avoid duplicates and to know where the recording lives.

Fix the template once. Meeting minutes for ordinary sessions, decisions and actions when the agenda is short and operational. The same template from one session to the next makes minutes comparable, which a human writer never guarantees.

Consent, which is not optional

Recording a private conversation without the agreement of those present is prohibited in Switzerland as in France, and criminally punishable. A board is the last body that can afford to overlook it.

Writing the rule into the internal rules is not legally sufficient on its own: the announcement must be made in session. The app offers an audible start signal, on by default, and it is customary to open the session with an explicit sentence, recorded at the head of the minutes.

One point is worth settling in advance rather than in session: what happens if a member refuses. The answer fits in one line of the internal rules, and it beats an improvised discussion.

What becomes of the recording

The audio and the transcript remain accessible to the account holder. They are stored in Switzerland, in the Zurich region; the processing, however, runs on European entry points, which we prefer to write plainly rather than round off.

Two internal rules deserve to be set at the same time as the first: how long the audio is kept after the minutes are adopted, and who has access to it. The app does not decide that for you, and a serious body does not leave the point implicit.

What it changes over a year

The minutes go out within hours, not the following week. Decisions are stated with their condition, because the condition was spoken. Actions carry a name and a deadline. And a question asked a year later, about what was decided and why, is settled by a text search rather than a collective reconstruction.

What the minutes become

Minutes circulate: they go to members, they get appended, they get archived. The note exports to PDF for circulation and archiving, and to Word when the secretary has to add the statutory wording before adoption. The transcript alone can be exported too, if the body decides to keep it.