Meetings and conference calls sometimes dominate the work day. Often, executives leave those meetings feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and packing a “to do” list a mile long that will more than likely not ever be a third of the way completed.
Milwaukee-based HarQen Inc., has developed a new way to think about conference calls that allows for quick and easy interaction, organization and follow up. Symposia is an online web conferencing dashboard that allows conversations to be recorded and stored alongside notes, reminders and “to-dos.”
“We’re really excited about this new product,” said Kelly Fitzsimmons, co-founder and chief executive officer of HarQen. “It takes something we all do every single day, and organizes it, stores it and makes it more convenient for collaboration, recall and follow up. It’s an incredible tool for professionals.”
Symposia users can invite individuals to a Symposia meeting simply by sending them a link to the meeting in their email, Fitzsimmons said.
Once users give their email address they are added to the meeting and dial in by telephone.
“In a typical business meeting the actual conversation is lost,” Fitzsimmons said. “You forget who said what, who came up with what idea and sometimes even who was supposed to follow up on something. With Symposia, the conversation is stored and can even be recalled with the click of a mouse.”
The online dashboard allows users to take notes, mark important parts of the conversation and even assign “to do” tasks for people, either publically so all attendees can see, or privately so only the user or certain individuals can see.
“Once the conversation is over the notes, flags and tasks can be pulled up along with one to two minutes of the audio that surrounded that note,” Fitzsimmons said. “Not only do you get the flag or the ‘to do’ that indicated something at this point in the conversation was important; you also get the context of the conversation that surrounded whatever prompted you to make the note.”
In addition, any part of the recorded conversation can be sent directly via email to any individual, which allows for constant collaboration and follow up.
Meetings are able to be organized around teams so even if everyone can’t call in, a copy of the meeting with all public notes and tasks will be sent directly to every person in the meeting list.
People in the meeting can assign tasks and create follow-ups that will immediately be sent to the individual’s email in real time.
“There’s no lag time, and to do’s can actually be completed during the meeting instead of two, three or four days later when professionals are finally able to get to them,” Fitzsimmons said.
When a task is sent to a person, an audio recording of the conversation happening at the time is also sent so individuals can understand the context of the conversation if they need to.
Symposia started out as a way for human resource departments to collaborate on executive level hires.
“What we loved about Symposia initially was that someone could conduct an interview with a candidate and then could send out direct links via email of the candidate’s answers to certain questions,” Fitzsimmons said. “It allows for the creation of a sort of highlight reel of each candidate. That way if someone missed the call or wasn’t able to attend they could still actively participate in the hiring process.”
It was after the company started testing the product that the horizontal meeting application platform emerged. The company released the full version
“Now we’re seeing even more use for the technology,” Fitzsimmons said. “That’s really exciting.”
Fitzsimmons now uses Symposia for every single one of her meetings, but admits that initially there is a bit of a learning curve.
“The first step is all behavioral,” she said. “Once a person can get past the idea that they don’t need to frantically write down every piece of information during a meeting and that they can actually take notes and mark important points right within the dashboard it’s a beautiful tool that actually encourages engagement and listening.”
And there’s no meeting hangover, according to Fitzsimmons.
“In fact it’s almost perfect recall,” she said.
