Day 9 – Make Virtual Calls and Meetings More Productive – 30 Day AI Challenge 2024

Welcome to the 2024 Edition of the #30DayAIChallenge. This year, we’ll be focusing on making Generative AI more accessible for all. So follow along and give each challenge a try yourself, plus share your own thoughts and experiments with a community of like-minded learners and tinkerers!*

Week 2‘s theme is “The Fast and the Curious: AI Drift“, focused on productivity and designed to help speed up tasks, plus reduce time spent on the mundane, both at work and home.

Today’s Challenge: More Productive Virtual Calls & Meetings

In today’s hyper-connected world, virtual calls and meetings have become a staple in our professional and personal lives. They bridge distances, connect global teams, and save considerable time and resources. However, they also bring their own set of challenges, such as managing back-to-back meetings, keeping track of discussions, and ensuring active participation. Day 9 of the 30 Day AI Challenge delves into how Generative AI tools can revolutionize the way we handle virtual meetings, making them more productive and less of a drain on our time and energy.

How Beginners Can Approach This Challenge

For beginners, diving into AI tools to enhance virtual meeting productivity can seem daunting. However, there are plenty of user-friendly tools designed to make this transition seamless:

1. AI Call Transcription Services: Tools like Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai offer real-time transcription services. They can join your Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or other virtual calls to transcribe conversations live. This is invaluable for creating meeting minutes, catching up on missed points, and ensuring that no critical information is lost.
2. Meeting Summarization Tools: Some AI services can summarize key points from your meetings, highlighting decisions made, tasks assigned, and deadlines agreed upon. This is especially useful for quick catch-ups if you join late or miss a meeting. For example, Microsoft Teams with Copilot does this quite well, from personal experience (see example 3 below).
3. AI-Powered Meeting Assistants: These are virtual bots that can schedule meetings, set reminders, and even follow up on tasks with participants. They integrate with various communication platforms and calendars to streamline meeting management.

Tips for Best Results:

• Always test AI tools in non-critical meetings first to understand their capabilities and limitations.
• Check the privacy policies and data handling practices of these tools, especially for sensitive business discussions.
• Use summarization tools to stay updated on missed or back-to-back meetings without sacrificing productivity.

Example 1: Otter.ai

Otter.ai is an AI-powered meeting note taker and real-time transcription software that can help teams be more productive in meetings. It can transcribe meetings, summarize key points, and assign action items. It also integrates with popular tools like Slack and Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and can be used to caption lectures and interviews.

Otter.ai’s CEO believes the ability to have AI avatars attend meetings on our behalf could be a reality by the end of the year. These AI work personas would be trained on recorded meetings and employee voice data, allowing them to replicate a specific worker’s contributions and answer questions based on their perspective. This would free up time for workers to focus on more creative tasks, and even allow them to send their virtual reps to meetings while on vacation. While technical and social challenges remain in creating AI avatars that seamlessly interact in dynamic group settings, Otter.ai’s recent developments in AI chatbots capable of understanding and responding to recorded meeting content mark significant progress towards this goal.

Example 2: Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai is an AI-powered meeting assistant that automates note-taking and provides in-depth analysis of your voice conversations. It automatically records and transcribes meetings across various video conferencing platforms, dialers, and audio files, then generates searchable transcripts in minutes.

The tool offers AI-powered search, collaborative features, and insights like talk time and sentiment analysis, allowing you to quickly review meetings, share key moments, and improve team processes.

Example 3: Microsoft Teams Copilot

Microsoft Copilot in Teams is helping improve the virtual meeting experience by offering features designed to make every meeting more productive and engaging. Whether you’re running late and need a quick catch-up on what you’ve missed, seeking to understand participants’ concerns and excitement levels, or looking to stimulate discussion during moments of silence, Copilot has got you covered. It can comb through transcripts to provide immediate updates, analyze participant contributions for deeper engagement, and suggest questions to foster idea generation. Additionally, Copilot can summarize meetings and draft recaps, ensuring team alignment and efficiency. This tool is great for managing meeting dynamics and enhancing participation, making it easier for everyone to contribute meaningfully and stay informed.

There’s a handy list of prompts you can also try, by tool, with Copilot Lab – here’s an example for Teams:

Advanced Users: Enhancing Productivity Further

Advanced users can explore more sophisticated AI integrations:

1. Custom AI Integrations: Develop or utilize custom bots that can integrate deeper into your workflow, automating more specific tasks like pulling up sales figures during a meeting or initiating workflows directly from discussion points.
2. Sentiment Analysis for Engagement: Use AI tools that analyze speech patterns and engagement levels during calls to adjust meeting dynamics in real-time, ensuring all participants are engaged and contributing effectively.
3. Automated Action Item Tracking: Advanced AI tools can track action items throughout a conversation and automatically update project management tools or remind participants of their tasks, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.

Wrap Up

As we lean into the future, the potential of AI to transform virtual meetings is pretty exciting. From saving time with transcriptions to ensuring tasks are never forgotten with automated follow-ups, Gen AI tools can make our virtual interactions more efficient and meaningful.

Given my cluttered calendar and often double or triple booked meeting slots, I’m personally looking forward to the day I can reliably send off my virtual avatar off to attend some of these future meetings! 😄 Till then, I guess these tools will have to do!

If you give any of these tools a try, leave a comment and share your experience! If you’re using other platforms to post, please tag your Facebook, Twitter / X or LinkedIn post with #30DayAIChallenge so others can find it too.

Till tomorrow…

*Please note: Participation in the 30 Day AI Challenge is at your own discretion and responsibility. Always ensure that no sensitive personal information, confidential, or proprietary company data is shared. Adhere to all applicable local laws and company policies. Enjoy exploring AI responsibly!