The meeting where I stopped typing (Scribe, an honest review)
For ten years I was that colleague. The one typing through the meeting. The one whose laptop screen everyone else stared at, wondering whether I was taking notes or replying to a text from my wife. My boss said it was rude. My wife said the texts were fine. I said the notes were necessary and continued to type.
Then the Scribe arrived.
The Scribe is a softcover notebook and a pen that looks like a regular pen. The notebook has nothing in it — no batteries, no dots, no electronics. You write on it the way you have always written on a notebook. The pen has a tip array that quietly tracks its own motion across the page.
First meeting using it: a one-on-one with a client. I closed the laptop. I opened the notebook. I wrote, in my own handwriting, the way I used to take notes in college. The client visibly relaxed. The conversation was better. The meeting ended at half-past instead of running over.
Then the magic part
By the time I closed the notebook, my phone already had the page as text. Searchable, tagged with the client's name, action items marked as little squares. The OCR on Indian English handwriting is the part that took the longest to get right, apparently. I do not know how. I only know that two weeks later, when I needed to remember what the client said about Q3, I searched her name and found the line.
The meeting is better because the laptop is shut. The notes are better because they are not lost. My boss has stopped complaining. My wife is texting someone else. Everybody wins.
I am writing this review by hand on a Scribe page. By the time I close the cover, it will be in this CMS. That is, frankly, slightly absurd. But also: very useful.