Ask Slashdot: What Is the Best Note-Taking Device For Conferences?

First time accepted submitter Duncan J Murray writes "I will be attending a 3-day science conference soon, consisting mainly of lectures, and was wondering what people thought would be the ultimate hardware/software combo note-taking device, taking into account keyboard quality, endurance, portability, discretion & future ease-of-reference. Is a notepad and pen still king? What about an Ipad? N900? Psion 5mx? A small Thinkpad X-series? And if so which OS? Would you have a GUI? Which text-editor?"

Comments

Livescribe

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a livescribe pen may be the best choice.

Re:Livescribe

[icebike]

Just a pen and paper.

No other device can keep up, and you get bogged down with operating the device, missing key points.
Pocket recorder as backup.

Re:Livescribe

[reason]

Which is why a smartpen like the Livescribe helps. It is just pen and paper to operate, but it lets you upload your notes afterwards, makes them searchable, and records sound to go with your notes in case you do miss anything. Knowing that means you don't have to write every little thing down, but can stick to key points and jump to the relevant part of the audio simply by pointing to the note with your pen on your paper notes, or clicking on the uploaded version on your computer later. It can even automate most of the conversion of written notes to text.

Re:Livescribe

[petes_PoV]

Any decent conference makes the proceedings available to attendees, so the notes that you need to take will not be the content of the various lectures.

What you will need to do is make contacts, do a bit of social networking and get to know the other people there (who are presumably in the same field that you are). For that, nothing beats a short written note - technology is far too clunky and it doesn't impress anyone, these days.

Re:Livescribe

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people don't understand the value of taking notes during lectures, especially since many of them these days are accompanied by downloadable or hardcopy slide decks which would seem to make the activity superfluous.

The reason physical notetaking works is that it forces the listener to engage the speaker actively rather than passively, and reorganize/rephrase the speaker's material in his/her own mind in real time, with room for possible challenges to the speaker's POV. At least 90 percent of the value of the notes is achieved by the end of the lecture, so if they turned out to be illegible, or the airline loses the bag on the flight home, you still have the overwhelming portion of the value. You've listened well.

Re:Livescribe

[reason]

Two more advantages of a smartpen: 1) it's less distracting for others than a laptop or tablet. Most people just think it's a fountain pen. 2) It's less distracting for me. I can't check my email on it.

Re:Livescribe

[Mr Z]

I honestly think it depends on the person. I find if I take copious notes, it doesn't help me, and instead I am more concentrated on being a secretary taking dictation than really *listening* (as opposed to just hearing) what has been said.

That said, jotting down a few choice notes at the right point in the presentation material can be invaluable. For me, it reminds me of the questions and confusion I had encountering the material the first time. These are likely the most interesting places to revisit anyway.

That said, I make the assumption that the presentations are in your domain of experience, so there is a fair bit of "real time" understanding of what you're learning. There was one class in college I took copious, detailed notes for: RLS331 Religions of the Eastern World. Fascinating, but information heavy and entirely out of my element. I earned a B+, and to this day I think the notes helped more than hurt. In any other class, I never considered notes an advantage beyond serving as a flag to say "look here again".

Re:Livescribe

[AliasMarlowe]

I run a *very* good conference, and we don't provide a proper proceedings.

You contradict yourself.

Seriously, every conference I've been to, and every conference I've presented a paper at, has published proceedings with the full articles of the conference. If an article is not delivered to the organizers by the cut-off date for inclusion in the proceedings, it is removed entirely from the conference (some conferences also have a lightweight peer approval to keep out junk). This covers many dozens of conferences over the last 20 years. It used to be that the proceedings were in a book or several, then it was CD+books, nowadays it's often just the CD. The author may choose to put some or all of the presentation as well as the article on the CD. Even those articles relegated to poster sessions are also published in full in the proceedings, not just the articles from the oral sessions.

Of course, there are events which only publish abstracts, but those events do not contain any articles which present a conclusion or a result. Such an event is not referred to as a conference, but as a seminar or colloquium in which people merely indicate what is being worked on, rather than presenting actual results or conclusions. Seminars and colloquia often occur between conferences, and I have attended a few which did publish proceedings, as well as those which merely published abstracts. However, their primary objective is networking among participants, and note taking at such events is minimal.

An event whose purpose is presenting results must publish proceedings. Otherwise everything at the event is nebulous - no better than hot air - and citing any article presented there is worthless. Where can the cited article be found? What - it's only an abstract? Then it's a fraud, from any scientific or engineering viewpoint.

Re:Livescribe

[reason]

Again, this depends on your field. In my field, conferences are where you present your latest results before you submit them as a journal paper, or while they are being considered for publication by a journal, or are in press, or occasionally, have just recently been published in a journal.

In my field, conference papers are worth nothing on your CV unless you are a student and they are the only publications you have. It is considered poor practice to cite conference papers (even from peer-reviewed proceedings) if there is a journal paper that you could cite instead. In general, published conference papers are read only by those who attended the conference, so they are for the most part a waste of everyone's time.

Go Low Tech...

[Frosty Piss]

Does technology *always* provide a better solution? I own an iPad, but really, a yellow pad and a pen and pencil are what I use at meetings and conferences...

The old fashioned way

[Anonymous Coward]

Pencil and Paper (if you want to digitize it later, use a sheet fed scanner or just a regular scanner).

TRS-80 model 100/102

[Freedom Bug]

keyboard quality: full travel keys
endurance: 8 hours on 4 AA batteries. Replacement batteries are cheap and ubiqutous
discretion: no flip up screen
portability: 3 pounds
future ease-of-reference: plain text files are the easiest to search & archive

A Ticonderoga II and linedPad

[JoeCommodore]

I've found the Ticonderoga II and linedPad to be an excellent system for taking conference notes, the graphics, though usually monochrome have had retina capabilities for decades, works with whatever style or language you know and is the envy of everyone else when their batteries fails and you keep writing.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

skip the conference

[Anonymous Coward]

and hang out at the bar - you'll have a better time

Re:OneNote

[EvanED]

I wasn't happy with OneNote on a standard laptop, but I used it for a while with my convertible tablet and it's almost a dream. Seriously, I complain endelessly about virtually every piece of software I use, I use different OSes at work and home in part so that they piss me off in different ways instead of all the same way... and I had virtually no complaints about how OneNote worked. A couple "this would be awesome" feature wishes, but that's different.

So my standard answer to this question is a convertible tablet + OneNote.

Benefits over paper&pencil is shareability, backup-ability, and (surprisingly good!) searchability. Drawbacks are high cost, heavy weight, and you have to deal with battery life.

Re:it's all between the ears

[JoeMerchant]

The best hardware/software combo device is between your ears. If you actually listen to and understand what is being said, you will remember it....

This was my method in college, also it didn't hurt to pair up with a dedicated scribe, the kind that wrote everything down, we'd get together after class and I'd explain her notes to her.

What Is the Best Note-Taking Device For Conference

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

A: A scribe, held in thrall.

We don't NEED April fools. With the real stories posted today, it's clear that fiction cannot compete in absurdity, shock, disbelief and ultimate dismay.

Re:iPad plus Notability

[Overzeetop]

I'm still disappointed with the quality of the writing available. Unless you prefer to write like a 5 year old with crayons, the iPad interface is just too low resolution (input) to produce useful text with a meaningful/efficient density. I've tried Notability in several meetings, and I find myself grabbing a steno pad or a piece of scrap paper to write down critical information.

Of all the things I wished for this time around on the iPad, it was that it would get a Wacom-type interface with pressure sensitivity and a high resolution digitizer. I might look at the tablet sized Note that's supposed to be released this summer, but with the investment in mobile apps on iOS, I'm not sure it's worth the switch.

Re:No April FOols?

[PopeRatzo]

Where's the April Fool's jokes for today??

My late Dad was a big April Fool fan. Every year he'd tie my shoestrings together and stuff paper in my shoes and that was just the beginning. All day, I'd be barraged with one goofy, unfunny joke after another. I thought it was so lame. He was a serious guy, fought in WWI with Merrill's Marauders, decorated, the whole bit. Worked his ass off. Never complained. But on this one day he'd turn into a total goof.

I don't know what made me think of him just now, but for some reason, April Fools Day is one of the days when I miss him most. He was a Dad in full.

The best

[DuranDuran]

The best note-taking device for conferences is a graduate student. They do good work and only require a modest amount of feeding.

Re:How Quaint

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are going to the conferences for the wrong reason. The papers and presentations are only a small portion of the conference. The best reason for going to a conference is to be able to talk with people in your field and outside of your field. The beginnings of many ideas and collaboration efforts stem from people talking at conferences (and the bar after the conference).

The actual presentations are typically used to see what type of work people are doing (or what progress they've made since the last time you talked) and can be used as "ice breakers" for talking to people you don't know yet.

Re:No April FOols?

[pushing-robot]

If it helps, I made up some ridiculous stories to fool your friends with:

Duke Nukem Forever released
most of game involves jokes about Half-Life 2 Ep. 3

Kim Jong Il, Gaddafi Dead
mad, mad world now almost 7% less mad

Apple now biggest computer manufacturer
HP says it never liked PCs anyway

Seal Team Six Kills Osama Bin Laden
then finds, kills Higgs boson

Windows, Ubuntu adopt new kindergarden UI
OS X still ignoring touch revolution

Newt Gingrich Runs For President
convinced he'll find his base among moon-men

Liberals Protesting Unemployment, Poverty
Starbucks shares sharply higher

Steve Jobs Dead
meets with Apple board three days later

My Little Pony Now Cool
teenage boys squee in delight

NASA Ends Space Shuttle program
asks if they can bum a ride with anyone

Your memory

[Intropy]

I know it sounds like I'm being a smartass, but I don't mean to be. Really, I recommend just putting down the pen, closing the laptop, turning off the tablet, and just paying attention. Everybody is going to be a little different, but since you're asking for advice, that is mine. I found early on in high school that taking notes of the pen and paper variety takes away from attentiveness in favor of trying to become a stenographer. Effectively, my attention would be split between the process of note taking and the lecture itself. And an electronic device is just that plus even more distraction. I find that when listening if there's something I do truly need to review, I'm that much more aware of that need and can go look it up with another resource (the text book, a syllabus, proceedings, internet references) after the fact.

Re:Your memory

[ndrw]

I will also try not to sound like a smartass, but you were doing it wrong. Effective note taking doesn't mean transcribing what the lecturer or presenter is saying, it means noting the key points and tidbits of information that are interesting to you and will remind you of the rest of the material when you review it later.

Re:Your memory

[Splab]

Note taking for me is rarely for usage later - the act of writing a note forces your brain to comprehend the information you just recieved and put into your own wording, this will greatly help most people better remember the key points of a lecture.

During my studies I wrote a heck of a lot of notes, but I don't think I've used any of them for anything.

Re:OneNote

[Lord Maud'Dib]

WordPerfect 5.1 beats all, hands down. That blue background... so soothing. Just the thing to get you in the mood to write.

Re:What Is the Best Note-Taking Device For Confere

[serviscope_minor]

Plant Jihadi rumors about your conference - then have the NSA scoop up everything - lecture proceedings to passing hallway conversations.

A neat idea, but you'd have to wait at least 2 or 3 months before you could access them on Wikileaks.