Taking notes

There will be a lot going on during your workshop. You might be speaking, introducing panelists, making sure everything looks good on a recording and/or livestream, coordinating with caterers, and, all the while, must be poised to help out if any technical difficulties arise. With all of this going on, you may find it a little difficult to take notes during the workshop. Nonetheless, taking notes is essential as it will allow you to better share the results of the workshops and will provide you with means to improve future workshops. Here are some tips that should help you take good notes during your workshop:

Quick tips for taking good notes during your workshop

• Get a volunteer to take notes. As noted above, you and the other organizers will be a bit busy with other things during the actual workshop. Having a dedicated note-taker will make it more likely that you end up with a useful record of the workshop. Ideally, the notetaker will not be a random person, but someone you’ve discussed the workshop with previously and whom you trust to take good notes (perhaps they’ll have even read this document).

• Live Tweet. There is an active community of biological scientists on Twitter (see the Addgene blog for a little more info about scientists on Twitter). The goal of live tweeting is to give the Twitter community the ability to understand what’s going on at your event as it’s happening. Some things you’ll need to do to successfully live tweet include:

  • Distill important messages and data into concise (280 character) tweets

  • Snap pictures of important slides or figures

  • Tag the appropriate people and use the appropriate hashtags

  • Answer followers’ questions as they come up

All of these things require you to pay close attention, accurately record events, and really think about what information is important (all keys to good note taking!).

• Write down questions as they come up and note what workshop materials they were asked in reference to. Audience questions may help you find gaps in workshop materials or help you identify what workshop contents to highlight and expand upon in a future blog post or other public write up.

• Take notes using whatever system you feel most comfortable with, but make sure to write them up and save them digitally later. I (Tyler Ford) am most comfortable and take notes fastest on paper. Even when live tweeting, I’ll often scribble out a few ideas on paper before composing the actual tweet. You, however, may be a particularly fast notetaker on your laptop or tablet and should do whatever works best for you. Regardless, after the event, you should type up your notes in a way that is easy for others to read and refer to (ideally breaking the notes down with explicit mentions of the workshop sessions they refer to). My handwritten notes (and I’m sure many peoples’ originally typed notes) are of no use to anyone but me and typing them up makes me think more carefully about what information contained within them is really important. Whatever means you use to take notes, make sure you have a camera at the ready to supplement your written notes with pictures of important slides, figures, or the results of group activities.