Recordings Are Not Documentation

A 60-minute meeting recording is not a meeting summary. A transcript is not a procedure. A Teams recording is not a training resource. And "it's in the recording somewhere" is not a documentation strategy.

Many of us have probably found ourselves digging through old recordings (or *ahem* 36,910 screenshots) trying to answer what should have been a simple question.

The information technically existed.

Somewhere.

In a recording.

Maybe in a transcript.

Possibly in a Teams chat.

Potentially in someone's memory.

Which meant the information wasn't actually accessible.

It was just preserved.

Those are not the same thing.

Documentation exists to answer questions.

Recordings exist to capture events.

Good documentation tells me:

• What happened?

• What was decided?

• Who owns it?

• What changed?

• What happens next?

Without requiring me to watch an hour-long meeting, search a transcript, or play detective.

This matters more than ever because organizations are recording everything.

Meetings. Trainings. Workshops. Town halls. Presentations.

The volume of information we're creating is exploding.

But information capture and knowledge management are not the same thing.

In fact, I've seen organizations become less effective because they mistake one for the other.

"We recorded it."

So happy for you.

Can anyone find it?

Can anyone understand it?

Can anyone use it six months from now?

Can a new employee learn from it without sitting through 47 hours of video?

If the answer is no, then the recording is functioning as an archive, not documentation.

Archives have value. But they're not the same thing.

Documentation is curated.

Documentation is organized.

Documentation provides context.

Documentation makes information usable.

The recording is just an ingredient.

And before anyone says, "Well, I can just feed the transcript into ChatGPT..."

No. Just no. Stop. Document the thing.