Haven’t a clue what to type..

[PandasIroning]

I was asked to minute a meeting last week. I was provided with an agenda and the last set of minutes but it really didn’t mean anything to me. The subject was nothing I’d ever been involved in. I’m so embarrassed that looking at my crappy notes I know I’ll not be able to put anything that makes sense.

Its playing in my mind and I don’t know what to do?

Normally it would have todays date/time. A list of who attended the meeting and often their titles.
Then a summary of the key points. Not in minute detail, but the main things and if any decisions have been made or things from the last meeting have been resolved/closed.
Do you have a colleague or manager who could check it before sent it to everyone?

Ah op this isn’t your fault! Go to your senior person and explain - you’ve never minutes before and though you were keen to gain experience and give it a go you are now struggling to type it up. This combined with the discussion being around topics you have no context/understanding of makes it a really hard task for anyone.

minuting is a learned skill, it’s admirable that you took on the task when asked but it will be even more admirable to ask your senior for guidance and training so that you can learn and become even more of a valuable asset to the company.

I used to have the meeting details: title, date, time, location, attendance/apologies before the actual meeting minutes.

I'd use the agenda topics asa guide to the main points, you could use the agenda topics as headings then summarise underneath. I used to put any actions at the end of each section. If you have a previous set of minutes you should be able to see what format they expect.

If there was any clarity needed I'd speak to the named person of the agenda topic, and minutes would be sent as a draft to the chair for review before being sent out.

Also if there was any extra papers, it'd be worth looking in those for extra information too as sometimes people are just saying points out loud that are written in them.

And, as long as your meeting is not super sensitive confidential info, next time you could use technology to help you become the best minute taker on the block. With a senior persons permission you can use a phone app that will record and transcribe the meeting so you don’t need to hand write notes at all, and then you can just copy/paste/summarise the key points from the transcription into the minute format used by your company.

hi, I do quite a few sets of minutes! the point of them is to provide a summary (not a total record of everything that was said) of the key discussion points, and what actions were agreed on.
You would normally structure it:
date & title
who came/sent apologies
previous minutes approved/not
any matters arising not otherwise on the agenda
then the specific agenda items
then any other business

if you follow the format of the last set, you will be fine. but it does take a while to get the style/tone that each meeting is used to. There should be some support to help you as well.