It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case, if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and it isn’t so it wasn’t.

Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes Prime Minister

We have four guidelines that will help you take excellent minutes:

1. Use Markdown. If you're not familiar with this format, see this quick primer.
2. Identify each topic with a new header.
3. Give each speaker a new paragraph, and identify them at the start.
4. It's good to capture the general gist of discussion, but it's critical to capture decisions.

Your minutes should look something like this:

## FooBar Spec Issue 23: use of the word "blah"

Brian: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Barry: Blah.

Bruce: Blah, blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH.

The working group decided to "blah."

## FooBar Spec Issue 42: widgets

(and so on)

Feel free to interrupt the discussion if you need clarification, someone's name, or just more time to write.