How do other people take Meeting Minutes with Obsidian?

Knowledge management
1

I am in the process of moving my meeting minutes from Notion to Obsidian. To do that, I created a folder named “Meetings”, but I started to realise, that I will need more organisation that that…
How do other people keep their meeting minutes? Do you have folders for each client? Do you just dump everything into your meeting folder?

It’s not like I don’t have any connection to the clients the notes are for. My template looks like this:

Filename: YYYY-MM-DD–TitleOfTheMeeting–ClientName
The content looks like this:

Titel

Key Value
Tags #InvoiceNumber, #ClientNumber
Kunde [[myClient]]
Datum {{date}}
Zeit 18:00 - 19:20
Verwandte Meetings Earlier meeting | next meeting
Thema Very Short Summary
Teilnehmer
  • Another Person’s Name
  • My Name
Projekte [[projectRelatingToMeeting]]

Zusammenfassung

summary of what happened

Nächste Schritte

next steps to do

Do you think this might be enough to stay being organised?
The graph looks like this in a random meeting note:
image

I would be happy to hear some insights from other people. :slight_smile:

5 Likes
2

I do keep the meeting notes in Obsidian, but these are mostly for myself.

I don’t want to rely on my memory to remember everything that was discussed during the meeting, so the main purpose is just to record what relevant pieces I managed to notice during the meeting. By proxy this also forces me to pay more attention − something I struggle with lately, with every meeting being online and me having the entire distracting power of internet at my fingertips at any moment =)

I try to keep things simple:

  • most of my meetings relate to a handful of projects I participate in
  • I usually keep a huge single note on each project, with date-marked headings/sections.
  • so, each meeting gets its own section in that huge note, with a heading like [[YYYY-MM-DD]] meeting topic/occasion
  • at the beginning i records names of participants, and a bit of info on them if i don’t know these people very well: which company/client/department this person works at, what’s their role in the company and in this project, etc.
  • then it’s just an outline of what’s being said by whom: only meaningful/relevants bits are captured, not every phrase
  • if relevant, I can capture some screenshots: these are automatically saved on disk so I can refer to them later, and I can have them also written to clipboard if I want to copy/paste immediately (I usually don’t though).
  • sometimes I record my own questions or comments that don’t get said during the meeting
  • immediately after the meeting ends, I work a bit on fixing typos, rephrasing stuff, and reorganizing the material as needed
  • after that I send these minutes via email to participants to ask them for feedback in case I forgot anything. My own thoughts/questions might or might be included into that post-meeting email.
  • what I also do but usually don’t share via email is I write a list of action items for myself based on the meeting minutes: do this, clarify that, fix this, talk to that person about some topic, etc. This section should typically feed into your task management system, but I don’t have one, so this is where I leave it − at least I will find this list here when I start working on that project again and return to this huge note.

I don’t do much with those minutes after that, except referring to them when I need some piece of info I don’t remember anymore, or just to see what was discussed last time.

This is not as efficient as some people with established task management systems and PKM hierarchies would like to have it, but it works for me: no setup required at all, and I can keep it absolutely free-form, which means zero-friction and extreme fluidity.

Hope this helps.

5 Likes
3

I take notes during the meeting and title the meeting the date and what the meeting was about. Then, I put links in the upper section to the topic, ie, work, then add it to the MOC on that page. I also add a tag for source, because I consider it a source document, since I’m probably the only one taking notes. Anyway. It’s fairly simple at this point, but it satisfies my needs.

1 Like
4

What does MOC stand for?

2 Likes
5

Sorry, MOC = map of content. It’s a term used here to mean a note that links other notes. Kind of like a Table of contents without the page numbers, as I understand it.

1 Like
6

I use several different parts to my records of meetings. This is only for internal meetings in a small (<20 people) organisation. The notes are just for my own purposes and are not shared.

I have pages for each team member with links to all meetings with them.

A separate page has things to raise with sections for each person. There are two embedded todoist queries per person - one is a query out of my work project filtered by the label for that person’s area. The other query is from a things to raise project also filtered by the same label.

Each meeting page has links to the participants. I played around with various options including having separate agenda, notes and action sections. But I’m currently running with just a note section, which starts out as an agenda and then I add notes and actions (highlighted until I act on them if mine). The page also embeds the relevant participants things to raise section.

So I can keep a running list of things to raise in todoist and it gets added to the meeting page. Although it would be possible to just add it directly to the things to raise page, I’m finding it quicker to just add a todoist task.

2 Likes
7

Thank you all for your insights! Although I would still love to know, how you organise them. :slight_smile:

Right now I stumbled upon another “problem”, so to say. For the Meetings I have different Projects that are linked to them, or rather Projects with several Meetings linked to it. How do you best track that? Do you suggest just linking all relevant Meeting Notes to that particular Project?

8

Maybe either set up a page of MOC for the meetings for that project and link to that page on the main project page or yeah, put all your meeting notes linked to the project page itself. I guess it matters how many project meetings you have, and whether you want them all right on a page for the project or sorted by another factor such as date, people involved, or subtasks, or something else.

9

Beginner here- How many MOCs do people usually have? I have one for work and may make one separate for personal interests like writing.

10

Thanks for the suggestion!
I decided to go with a different approach. People told me about the query code block. I used that now, to query all the meetings that are linked to that project. Which works out great, I use tags after all!

As for @Ahnniez, I personally don’t have any MOCs as of yet. I don’t feel the need for it yet. But maybe other people have a suggestion on how to build one! So far it seemed unnecessary to me. But maybe because I haven’t really seen how it is built for others.

11

I think the common answer is to start with one and build out? I do know that a good PKM is very personal so my number of MOCs may not be the same as yours. I have several because I have several areas of life I want to keep track of. Someone else may only have a couple, or even just the main one.

12

Could you share a screenshot of your MOC? If you don’t mind sharing, of course.

13

image
image1403×1325 40.3 KB

This is my index currently.

Here’s my “wellness” MOC

image
image1557×1213 69.1 KB

1 Like
14

What theme is this?

15

It’s Ars Magna. It’s available in the Community Themes.

16

That’s interesting! Do you regularly use that note to find other notes?

17

At this point, there aren’t many notes to find, but yes. when I do, I often go to the index and drill down.

18

This is my new process. I’m still shaping it. I have a note for each organizations/client, another for each project, and another for each meeting. I haven’t needed a note for any contacts yet, but I might have contact notes in the future.

For the organization note, its is kind of the general MOC. I might have multiple projects with a single organization.

The project note tracks requirements, progress, and summarizes things I’ve learned. If I have a meeting, I embed it in the Project note under the meeting date ![[MeetingName#Agenda/MeetingNotes]]. I might make a # Summary heading in the meeting notes template, but for right now my notes are short enough not to need them. I collect the action items, but I don’t need them in my project page because they should really live in my task manager. This is why I only embed the notes.

If it is a good meeting, there should be an agreed upon agenda before it begins. I would have an outline already in the note and fill in what is discussed in the outline. In the non ideal case, I might have a few bullet points I want to bring up already in there and then just take notes. I have a section for action items and questions. You could just use tags instead of the separate sections – tag:actionItem or tag:Question if you need to note something quickly. I am experimenting with drafting the followup email in Obsidian. The formatting isn’t working well with my email client. I don’t know if I will make emails their own note or not. Many of the followup emails involve me learning something, which is why I draft them in my PKM system.

Organization note template:
YAML

Keywords:
Status:

Overview

Contact:
Contact Email:

Objective:

External Links

Projects

Project 1 Name

![[Project1#Progress]]

Meetings

![[Meeting1#Agenda/ Meeting Notes]]
![[Meeting 2#Agenda/ Meeting Notes]]

Project 2 Name

![[Project2#Progress]]

Meetings

![[Meeting1#Agenda/ Meeting Notes]]
![[Meeting 2#Agenda/ Meeting Notes]]

Project Template:
YAML

Keywords:
Status:
OmniFocus Link
DevonThink Link
Reference Manager Link

Overview

![[OrganizationNote#Overview]]

Requirements

Progress

Title (Date)

Title (Date)

![[Meeting1#Agenda/ Meeting Notes]]

Learnings

Meeting Note Template
YAML

Keywords:

Overview

Organization: [[Organization]]

Project: [[Project]]

Scheduled:

Attendees:

Links:

Agenda/Meeting notes

Questions

  • [ ]

Action Items

  • [ ]

Follow-up Email

19

This looks similar to what I have been considering. How is it working for you?

It sounds like you have multiple active clients / projects, similar to my situation. Do you have separate top level folders for Organisations, Projects and Meetings or is it a flat folder hierarchy? Also, are you using Templates within Obsidian for this or something like Keyboard Maestro?

20

This looks awesome, be great to hear how you have been going with it!