News: Software for Small Business

OneNote - Changing the Way You Look at Meeting Notes

Get better meeting results

by Keith Wheeler

3/29/2006

Technology has evolved to afford the new, exciting ways to record what happens at meetings and classes. From the outset of personal computing, efforts have been made to ease the process of taking notes and making them useful at later times. Microsoft has made a significant improvement in this endeavor with OneNote. The most effective implementation of OneNote includes a high-performance TabletPC. For the small business executive, recording meeting notes and preparing follow-up are critical functions of which OneNote can be of great service. In 1990, as a student at the University of Illinois, I lugged a 17 pound laptop computer from class to class. I was making an early attempt to leverage technology to my advantage with respect to collegiate coursework. Unfortunately, I discovered that the 1991 solution wasn’t ready for primetime. This was primarily due to the lack of software which would allow me to take notes in real-time without focusing on the technology rather than the class topic. Naturally, the hardware has changed tremendously since 1990. Everything is faster, lighter, cheaper and better. That changes the 17 pound laptop to a 4.1 pound TabletPC with a beautiful color screen (black & white was all I could afford 16 years ago). Storage is up, too. The 1990 hard drive capacity was 40 MB. Now, the drive holds 60,000 MB or 60 GB. However, the most important change is the addition of the OneNote software from Microsoft. A single point of capture for the taking of notes using more than one medium gives the user a feeling of control. While taking notes (by typing or handwriting on a TabletPC), the user can also be using the computer’s microphone to record everything it can hear. The structure of notes/data using folders and sections in OneNote gives the software flexible options for each user’s unique perspective. The search feature in OneNote allows for text search whether the handwriting has been converted to text or not. In addition, the ability to use customizable note flags which can be sorted, the user can see all Action/Follow Up Items in one simple report. OneNote changes the way small business meetings are remembered/recorded. Since most small business meetings are not held with large groups of people and detailed agendas, it’s important to be able to capture the brainstorming and decisions which occur. Ultimately, OneNote improves the results of meetings by making the content more useful and more accessible. Clearly, that’s a winner for small businesspeople.