AI For Smarter Meetings w/ Henrik de Gyor My AI fluency

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
0:00

It's Alex once again from the Remote Work Life Podcast here with my good friend Henry DeGure from My AI Fluency. We're talking about AI. We're not preaching to you about the latest tool or the latest fad. We're talking about it from the res from the context of improving how you work effectively. We know what it's like as a remote worker. Often you work, you find yourself working effectively alone. In some cases, you find yourself having to balance work and life sometimes, especially if you're working from home. And sometimes what happens is work drifts into your life, essentially. So Henrik and I, we thought to ourselves, how can we begin to use AI to work most effectively? And then how can we now share what we're learning? Not from the standpoint of, as I said, preaching to you, from the standpoint of just sharing what we know, sharing what is working, even sharing what's not working. So, Henrik, I'm so happy to have you on another episode again today. I'm really happy to have your expertise. I'm happy to have your insight in terms of how you work and how we can share this with the remote work-life community.

Henrik de Gyor:
1:09

Thank you so much, Alex, for having me on the show again. Appreciate it.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
1:12

Yeah, love having you here, Henrik. And one big problem, at least from my point of view as remote workers, especially, I don't really like having meetings, especially the synchronous sorts. I try to reduce the number of synchronous meetings that I do have. And Henrik, the problem I've had over the years is that with synchronous meetings, is you're taking notes sometimes. I've actually taken notes using a pen and paper and a book. I've graduated to taking notes on a computer, and now we're in the age of AI and more technology. I'm beginning to use AI in different ways to improve that particular workflow, that meeting workflow. So it's as pain-free as possible. It's pain free enough going on to a synchronous meeting, but use of technology can reduce that pain. I don't know if you felt that pain yourself of the synchronous meeting.

Henrik de Gyor:
2:06

Absolutely. All the time. I'm in meetings every single day of the week. And whether it's for work or pleasure or speaking to professionals like yourself. And I want to note everything. But now it's very easy and I don't have to even pick up a pen or a pencil or use paper, which I'm not a fan of.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
2:23

And these meetings, actually, do you have to it'd be quite ironic, but do you have to do a lot of meetings with my II fluency?

Henrik de Gyor:
2:29

Yes. Yeah, there's a number of them. So there's client calls and then there's internal calls as we're building things. We're building our community. We're building our different tools that we're going to be releasing later this year, all very exciting things. It's so that yes, there's a number of tools, a number of meetings to be had and a lot of things to capture and decide on, to your point.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
2:46

And do you ever find yourself you're in a meeting, you're trying to, I'm not saying it's deliberate, but sometimes you're I find myself concentrating so much that, and there's so many different things going on. And then sometimes there's a noise in the background, maybe which kind of distracts me. I'm trying to make these notes, not with my pen or pencil anymore, but I'm trying to make some notes. I'm half listening, I'm half typing or writing these notes down. And then that's just the that's just the start of things. Then after the meeting, I'm looking, I used to be looking through my written pencil notes or my written notes in my my journal. And then I'm thinking to myself, I can't read what I just wrote, or what does that particular thing mean? Does that apply to me, or does that apply to him or her who was in that meeting? Sort of thing. So it you in that meeting, you're half listening, you're taking notes, and then you're fixing the notes after the meeting has finished. And then you, if there's two or three people in the meeting and everybody's designated you as the note-taker, you have to then update everybody else on those meetings. So it's a lot of kerfuffle, it's a lot of toing and frowing. Don't know if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. I sound a bit disorganized, but yeah, that's how I've been in the past.

Henrik de Gyor:
3:56

Yeah, I try to avoid that as much as possible, to your point. Because note-taking doesn't make sense by today's standard anymore. It stopped making sense like earlier this decade, and definitely does make sense this year. Now that we have tools, though, and it doesn't matter which tool you pick, some tools are better than others. But the AI note-taking tools, it's a game changer. It's needed by today's standard. And then there's no gaps, to your point.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
4:21

And I think I make myself sound a bit clumsy, but you're right that AI has been a game changer for me. But I think even since we first met, you introduced me, Henry, it was about 2018, something like that, or even before then, I think, to Otta. I know we're not gonna go down the road of tools, but that was something that sort of changed the game for me in terms of taking taking notes for meetings when I was really focused on working remotely. And I've got this workflow now that it's it has come, my my workflow has modified and become more advanced as time has passed by. And just want to take you through the workflow that I use. And I think this is a workflow that maybe if you're listening, could apply to you, could hopefully make your life easier. As I said, we're not necessarily about the tools, we're about the workflows and how we can improve. So, what I tend to do is I tend to use a meeting platform. Right now we're on Zoom, it could be Google Meet, it could be anything. It doesn't really matter about the tool necessarily because they've, to some degree or another, they've all got some form of tech in there that can help with these meeting notes. So, for example, I use Google Meet quite a lot, and I am using Google Meet with Google's own AI. And the first step I do is capture that meeting. So that's step one. Capture the meeting. I don't need to listen to every word. I don't need to, I can just be myself a bit more, I can be a bit more present in the meeting. I can aim to have a conversation because the AI takes care of sort of the context and all of the note-taking. So that has been a real, a real game changer for me is using that. So that for me is step one. Step two of this workflow that I have is then getting a clear summary and action items. And this is after the call. So after the call, I'll ask AI for, and sometimes it will do it manually, so automatically, but I'll ask it for a short recap of what was discussed in the meeting, a short summary. List it lists all the key decision makers. You can actually, in some cases, in many cases, you can it asks you, it recognizes each person's voice, it separates each person's voice. You can then edit it to link the voice to the actual part of that conversation. So that's a really it's a really beautiful thing. Listing the key decision makers, you can list, then you can ask it to list the key action points that were decided and who owns each action. So while you're talking the meeting, while even you and I, Henry, when we have our meetings, we will actually say, deliberately say, I will do this or you will do that. And then the AI picks up on that. And it's then when you look at the meeting notes or when you ask it, it actually then tells you who had agreed during the meeting to do those particular types, those particular actions. So that's beautiful. So you list actions with owners and the deadlines as well, and then it's this is done in a matter of minutes. Whereas before I used to spend hours of looking through the notes and trying to remember all these other sorts of things. So like a matter of minutes. Step three for me then is sharing the notes with those people who are in the meeting, you and I, or whoever it may be. The other day I was in a meeting with with a developer who's working, who I'm working with, and we had a meeting, it was quite long, it's quite technical in some ways as well. He was saying things that were quite technical. I didn't even know how to spell some of the things that that he, I'd not heard of some of the things, but the AI picked up these things. And again, in the meeting, I said, Are you going to take care of that? And he said yes. So again, the AI picked up on that in the post-meeting notes, which I shared with him. And another thing is just to I use those post-meeting notes to create a very short, succinct email, uh, which I could then send to the developer said to you or whoever is in that meeting. And yeah, sending a short version to people who as well who might have missed the meeting who who may should probably should have been in a meeting as well. So it's there's so many cons to using something like this, a workflow like this, make everything easy to make life easier. Another thing is AI, it makes, it can make drafts, it's a lot more accurate. Obviously, you want to get the sort of buy-in from the people who are in the meeting. You want to make sure that whoever's in the meeting knows that there's a note-taker, an AI note-taker. You want to make sure that they're happy to for the notes to be taken. That's obviously paramount. But once you've got that, it's you're good to go. And then step four for me is especially you and I, Henrik, as podcasters, we tend to use AI, Otter, all these different types of AI to make notes. We even used AI to come up with this structure for this episode. But then after this, after we've made this episode, we can then use it to turn it into different types of different forms of content. We're not, I'm not gonna go into detail about that, but that's in a future episode in terms of the writing side of AI. But we can use it to turn it into LinkedIn posts, we can use it to turn into scripts or at least outlines of scripts that we can then use for our conversations that we're having. So many different things, blog posts, guides, it's just the opportunities are just for me, it's just literally limitless. So it's been really good for me, Henry. It's been really good. And I'm really glad you introduced me to to Otter. Otter was, as I said, we're not really focusing on tools necessarily, but if I was to flag up a tool, that's really been good for me. Otter has been a really good one. And I use the Google Suite as well, so it's been really good for me. Yeah. And Henrik, for you, any particular sort of areas yourself that you found, any particular workflows yourself that it's worked for where meetings are concerned?

Henrik de Gyor:
10:14

Yeah. Just to echo everything that you said, but also add that if you use voice prompts, for example, you can say action item on on so Henrik has an action item to do this, or Alex has an action item to do that, or by XYZ data, that kind of thing, it'll pick it up. And then you there's no note-taking necessary. And then it'll include it in that summary, which is super, super helpful. So there's no more note-taking, there's no more, and it's verbatim. So there's the summary, and then there's the full transcript of what everyone said. And unless it's a super noisy environment, which I don't know why you would be meeting in a super noisy environment, but it'll pick up everything that's said. Because if it's a super noisy environment, most people in the room won't hear it either, or wherever your meeting is. It's super important to have a recording of that information. A, it's summarized, b, you have verbatim information, particularly when it's uh it's potentially legal or potentially of challenge of some sort where there's disputes or negotiation of some sort as well. And then there's also, and we're not the only ones to use this. So, like I spoke to somebody who works for a hospital group in the United States, and they use it for patient meetings. So when they meet for patients, of course, they're with consent, super important, and not just in Europe, but and not just in the medical field in general. Oh, yeah. Consent is important for everyone to know that hey, by the way, this meeting is being recorded, just for transparency's sake and sharing the recording is very helpful as well. But also, so what I found with the hospital center is they record the patient meetings, so there is no note taker on the side. It's literally like the everything in the room is being recorded, and the doctor or or the nurse practitioner or the nurse or whoever is in the and the patient, uh, it whatever they're saying is being captured. And so it's part of their record, and of course, kept private, of course, within the hospital center for obvious reasons, and within the patient confidentiality needs of said region and country, et cetera, et cetera, and hospital. And then more importantly, they use AI not only to transcribe and get the prescriptions done and things like that, but then they also have it sort their emails. So whether they're a doctor, nurse, or admin, or uh staff somewhere else in the hospital, they're having patient questions being sorted and prioritized complaints or appraise or kudos being sorted and filed away. So that if they need to, oh, what's what good things did you do this quarter? They can just pull that up really quick, or how many challenges did you uh handle this week or this month? They have that, that running count, right? Or internal updates, whatever new medical is going on, or medicine or recalls or whatever, or we need supplies of this or that or the other thing, or we have a new doctor that is this or a surgeon that does that. And we'll we'll talk about a little bit more about that in the future episodes because AIs can change a lot of things. Oh yeah. Right now, it's and we're talking about meetings only, right? And sorting emails, but there's a lot more that AI can do, not just in the medical field and the meeting field and the writing field and the content creation field too, that we'll talk about. But that there's a whole lot in one thing that's the kind of a principle is that AI is really good at sorting because it's just data, right? And but the humans for now are still the ones who are acting. And you have to pick as a human, you have to pick a tool and pick to use AI, right? Because your job isn't gonna be taken away by AI. Your job is gonna be taken away by uh humans using AI in the very short term, and it's already happening in the at least in the United States. So it's really a matter of being as efficient, as scalable, as as flexible as possible, and so that when you have to take on more, you can because you're using these tools. So it's really important to do that because why sort through paper and take note notes on paper? I like I literally don't understand by this decade, literally, or several actually, particularly this decade, why anyone would still be using paper? Because after you take the notes, to your point, Alex, you have to take those notes and then process them after the meeting. Or what do you do when you have back-to-back meetings all day long? Do you work another few hours afterwards to process all your notes?

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
14:44

Exactly.

Henrik de Gyor:
14:44

That are incomplete in the first place.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
14:47

That used to be me.

Henrik de Gyor:
14:48

And you're not the only one. So there I still see people taking notes on paper. And it's and I'll tell people like we're running, we're using an AI transcription tool, and I'll hand them the the note taker or the secretary or whoever. Like sometimes there's literally a person with a secretary title, even though a man or woman is not saying they're assistants, but uh there's and I'll be giving them like several people will give them, they'll be running their own AI transcription tool, interestingly enough, sometimes like they want their own, and because they they want a competing one, oh, I want the Microsoft one, or I want the auto one, or I want the Google one. Sure, no problem. You can run out as many as you want at the same time if you really want to, but ultimately it's probably going to be very close to the same. Yeah, the formatting might be a little different if you care, and that can be formatted pretty easily by today's standard as well. So it's really about no-taking and capturing as much as possible. So, like ABC should be always be capturing, right? And capture everything so that if there's a nugget of information that was a very fleeting moment, very fleeting idea, right, that just escapes the mind, no matter how sharp our minds are. And unfortunately, they're not getting better, but especially by today's standard, they are captured. And so even if you have one keyword that you can search for in that transcript, you can find it across all transcripts, across all meetings. Yep. And so it's really powerful that way to capture every idea possible. So it's not like, you remember that idea that we had last week? Yeah, no, I don't remember it.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
16:19

Which one?

Henrik de Gyor:
16:21

Exactly. Yeah, we spoke about about 50 of them, actually 104.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
16:25

But idea 104 from last Thursday.

Henrik de Gyor:
16:29

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. They're like 2:04 p.m. on Thursday. You remember that one? Yeah, it's like, no, I don't remember that one, but now it's captured because like you said this and I said that, and you added to it, and it's like, oh yeah, there that's a great idea. We should do that. Let's do that. So it's really simple to capture that. But yeah, it's really about the practical. So it's really a matter of not having guesswork when you have to revisit a project. It's not guesswork anymore, it's like literally there, and you just have to reference it whenever you want to. It's no longer, I can't find my notebook that I wrote it on. Oh, no, no problem anymore because unless you I have that problem.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
17:08

I've got I was looking in my cupboard and I've got banks and banks of notepads that I used to take all these notes with. And I'm looking back and I'm thinking to myself, what does how did I even make sense of these things? It's like it's but there's another point there, actually, is that not that we want to reference them. Yeah, I've got a library, basically, a dewey decimal system. But if what you're doing effectively by by taking notes, automating the process of taking notes, is you're building up your sort of uh a bank of information. And especially if you're building notes, for example, that's related to your area of expertise, ideas, all these different types of things. If you're building that that up, you can then create a bank that you can then that other people, that your clients effectively, if obviously if the information is applicable to them, can then access. You can create a bank of that information, they can question, they can put a question to that bank of information and get information from you. So it's your IP that you're your own search tool, basically.

Henrik de Gyor:
18:12

Yeah.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
18:13

100%. So I and I think what you said earlier on, Henrik, is it's so relevant that it's AI is not taking people's jobs, it's people who are using AI effectively or willing to use AI effectively are the ones that are putting themselves at the forefront of the queue of jobs, careers, etc. So what I'd urge people to do is just start by maybe speak to your one of your trusted colleagues. You have maybe you have a meeting coming up this week where if you agree with your colleague, you can take you can use an AI to take meeting notes, whether it's, I don't know, I don't matter which one it is, take meeting notes, see how it works, and just try to use it, try to get into it so that you can be begin at least, or at least try to become comfortable with using this technology and therefore enhance yourself, enhance your sort of own personal brand, enhance your own sort of career going forward. So that's what I'd urge people to do. That's just have an experiment, just call it an experiment.

Henrik de Gyor:
19:17

So one simple reuse is taking that transcript from a particular meeting and use and asking it, just taking that transcript out, so you can export it in multiple different fashions from most most tools out there, and you put it into an AI, pick your one, pick your favorite one, doesn't really matter, and ask it to pull out useful parts and say and give it a prompt, like a specific prompt. Oh, can you create me a LinkedIn draft or for a post or for an internal update for the company for that matter, or a personal notes of for your own learnings, or action items that you need to done so that you can pull out all the action items from that transcript just for you, right? And you in theory, you could do that for all the transcripts that you did for that day or that week and say, oh, and then add them to my calendar, saying for in my follow-ups for tonight, tomorrow morning, whatever that looks like, or uh as before the due date, assign me time on my calendar to do that so that it can basically add that into your calendar and find time available slots to to just do heads down time of deep work of focusing on whatever that work is, or collaborative work for that matter, to do that those tasks because you should have downtime or time that you're doing the work yourself and focusing, however you whatever you're doing for work for that matter, or even for personal purposes. Like I have personal projects that I work on as well, and I have to assign time to it. And AI helps them with that because it's really a matter of finding the time and finding the tasks that I'm gonna do during that time. So I can move the needle and move the task forward. It might not necessarily be done within that one sitting. Writing a book, I'm not doing in one day, obviously. Yeah, podcasts, there's a little faster.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
21:09

Yep. I think that's the point, isn't it? Is the main point is that don't get overwhelmed, don't get inundated by the gurus talking about the tools because they're you know often there is an ulterior motive to the tools that they're push pushing forward in the YouTube videos, etc. Just think about the problem that you're having first or the workflow that you need improving and see how AI can sort of segue into that workflow. And if you've got questions about AI, Henrik at my AI Fluency can help. So I'll put the link in the show notes where you can contact Henrik directly. And from a perspective of, as I said, career development or personal brand, check out the link in the show notes that I have because I'm noticing there are more and more jobs, more and more roles are including AI specific tasks, duties, etc. They're expected. Expectations and the job descriptions are growing. I share companies that are hiring remote workers and also the sorts of opportunities that you as a remote worker can align with. So check that out in the show notes. In the next episode, we're going to continue this theme of AI. It's really AI-powered productivity, is what we're talking about in this series of episodes. We're going to talk about several different things. Obviously, today we talked about meetings. We're going to talk about writing in a future episode. We're going to talk about hiring in a future episode, health and well being, self coaching, all these sorts of things. Even cloning yourself is another area we're going to discuss. So thank you, Henrik, for joining us. Thank you for being here again. And we'll again talk about this on a future episode.