I have been testing out an app called Otter.  In a word, it is fantastic, and a huge help to a State Association who wants an easy way to take notes and record their Association/Board meetings.  Best of all, the FREE version is all you need.  There is a premium version for those who need something like this weekly, but for quarterly board meetings, the FREE version will do just fine.  Here is what it does:

• You can record conversations on your phone or through the browser on the website using your laptop mic.
• You get real-time streaming transcripts and within minutes, it produces searchable notes with text, audio, images, speaker ID, etc.
• You can save and share these notes as a transcript and/or mp3 recording, and you can save it to the cloud, like google drive, etc.

It picks up voices from across the room, so even if you don’t set your phone right next to the speaker, it still does a great job of picking up what is said.  Of course, folks need to talk one at a time, but when 1 speaker stops talking and another starts, it does a decent job of recognizing 1 speaker from another and puts their comments into their own paragraph on the transcript.

If you are interested in using the program, click here.