Meeting Summaries

Meetings are expensive. If you don't walk away with clear action items, the meeting was a failure. ChatGPT is the perfect tool for converting a "brain dump" of conversation into a structured record.

1. Using Transcripts

Most video tools (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet) provide a text transcript. Paste this into ChatGPT (using delimiters!).

The Power Summary Prompt:

"Below is a transcript of a [Type of Meeting]. Please provide a summary in the following format:

1. Key Decisions: List anything that was officially decided.
2. Action Items: List who is doing what and by when.
3. Follow-up Questions: List things that were left unanswered.
4. Executive Summary: A 2-sentence overview for anyone who missed the meeting."

2. Handling "Noise"

Transcripts are often full of "Um," "Uh," and small talk. ChatGPT handles this automatically by prioritizing meaningful tokens.

3. Sentiment Analysis

Ask the AI to analyze the "vibes" of the meeting.

"Was the team enthusiastic or hesitant about the new project based on this transcript? Point to specific quotes."

graph TD
    Meeting[Live Meeting] --> Transcript[Audio Transcript]
    Transcript --> ChatGPT[ChatGPT Processing]
    ChatGPT --> Doc[Structured Summary]
    Doc --> Slack[Share with Team]

4. The "Action Item" Extractor

If you don't have a transcript, you can just paste your own messy notes.

"Clean up these messy notes from my meeting and turn them into a clear Trello-style task list."

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Hands-on: Summarize This!

Take any 5-minute video or podcast transcript (or write a fake dialogue between 3 people). Task: Use the "Power Summary Prompt" from step 1 to extract the value.

Key Takeaways

• Format is everything: Ask for specific sections like "Decisions."
• Use Checklists for action items.
• Summaries help keep asynchronous teams in sync.