Silicon Valley Musings

During yesterday’s seminar with guest speaker
Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women, Adam and I took notes collaboratively using SubEthaEdit (formally Hydra). Our notes from the seminar can be found here.

For me, taking notes distracts me from the topic at hand. But without notes, it is difficult recall specific details later. Collaborative note taking is a nice compromise. Others can fill the gaps while each of us in turn concentrates on particular points. And the quality of the resulting notes is generally better than an individual effort.

I still find SubEthaEdit a bit clunky. It flickers when several participants are entering information as the same time. It doesn’t support automatic spell checking. It’s embarrassing to have your colleagues realize how much you depend on spell checker. Adam found it did not have automatic HTML markup. And of course, only Adam and I could participate since there is no Windows version.

Still, it?s a nice tool for group seminars or lectures.