Are you one of those folks who take notes longhand? Are you trying to figure out how to digitize your notes so you can use them for other products? Well, I am one of those folks. Here is my latest strategy for converting raw handwritten notes into trip reports and blog posts.I attended the Association for Talent Development International Conference and Exposition in San Diego in May. I took 71 pages of notes throughout the conference. After I complete a conference, I share what I learn through trip reports and blog posts. Creating these artifacts usually takes a lot of time. However, my latest process has quickened my process.
Step 1. Create Audio Files
I took the train from San Diego to Boston on my way home. So I had lots of time on my hands. Knowing I would write a trip report and blog posts, I wanted to digitize my handwritten notes. I opened an audio recording program on my phone called Voice Recorder.
Using Voice Recorder, I summarized my written notes while adding my thoughts. I usually use Otter.AI directly, but it requires a constant internet connection.
Step 2. Create Transcriptions
Between towns, I would create audio files of my notes. When we pulled into a city, I uploaded the audio files into Otter.AI because I had a reliable connection to the internet.
Otter.AI transcribed the files. This would only take a couple of minutes at the most because each of the files was relatively small. I would then rename each transcription. Finally, I would export the transcription into a text file.
Step 3. Draft a Blog Post
Now that I had a transcript, I wanted to transform it into a blog post to share lessons learned with others. To do that, I feed chatGPT the following prompt along with the transcript:
Please create a blog post from the following Association for Talent Development presentation notes: <transcript>
ChatGPT would then draft a blog post which I would upload into WordPress and further clean up. I would make necessary corrections and use Grammarly to improve the post. Here are the posts I created from the ATD 2023 conference:
- #ATDALC2023: What I Learned at the ATD Leaders Conference
- #ATD23: Day 1 Recap From the Association for Talent Development Conference
- #ATD23: Day 2 Recap From the Association for Talent Development Conference
- #ATD23: Day 3 Recap From the Association for Talent Development Conference
- #ATD23: Day 4 Recap From the Association for Talent Development Conference
Step 4. Create a Trip Report
One of the final products I create is a trip report. Again, I used chatGPT to help build the report. I asked chatGPT to generate a list of bulleted key points from my raw notes and blog post. Here is the prompt I used:
Please create a list of key points as bullet points from the following content: <notes and blog post>
Trip notes are a great way to share what you learn at conferences. My trip report format has four major areas:
- Purpose
- Itinerary
- Discussion
- Conclusions/Recommendations
The discussion section takes the most time to develop. I arranged what I learned into major themes. There are three subpoints under each theme:
- Insights from the conference
- Initiatives to work on
- Resources to review
The bulleted insights relate to lessons learned from a presentation or other observation. The initiatives focus on how I intend to apply what I learned at work. These may be ideas that are swirling around in my head. The resources to review section has links to websites and documents that I want to remember or share with others.
In building my trip report, I would copy and paste each bullet from chatGPT and place it in the correct theme and subsection.
Summary
As I noted, this new process helped me create these artifacts in a fraction of the time. Once your notes are digitized, you can use tools like chatGPT to help repurpose the content for all types of products, including slide decks, videos, podcasts, etc.
That is my current strategy. Let me know how it works out for you.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska
