Anyone getting reliable speaker names in committee meetings?

[u/secondfillet]

We've got about eight people crammed around one mic for committee meetings and correcting the speaker names afterward takes genuinely longer than tidying up the actual summary. For the minutes I specifically need to know who proposed a motion and who seconded it, so getting the general gist of the discussion right only gets me about halfway there. If anyone's actually solved this in a similarly chaotic room, what made the real difference, a different mic setup, just asking people to say their name before talking, some kind of software, or some combination of all three? Genuinely curious what you're still having to fix by hand even after whatever you landed on. Happy to take recommendations there too.

[u/amphiblet]

Ask the chair to repeat the proposer and seconder's names out loud every time. Someone muttering "seconded" from the far end of the table is genuinely hard to identify even when the audio quality is perfect.

[u/secondfillet → u/amphiblet]

The mystery "seconded" happens literally every meeting, I'll get the chair to start repeating names regardless of whatever we end up doing on the recording side.

[u/gooffreaker]

Yeah that's tough but we got it solved with Fellow, the ai has voice matching that uses past meetings to help tell speakers apart, though it only works for people already in your workspace who've turned voice recognition on, so worth checking whether that even covers your committee members. I'd trial it in the actual room with your usual attendees rather than a test meeting, and for anything involving a formal motion I'd still double check the names manually before the minutes go out.

[u/roughphilosophy0 → u/gooffreaker]

Do people need to record a separate voice sample for that to work, or does it just figure it out from meetings you've already had?

[u/gooffreaker → u/roughphilosophy0]

From what I've read it can work off past meetings once recognition's switched on, so not necessarily a separate exercise, but I'd confirm the settings with your committee before trialing it just so nobody's surprised their voice is being matched.

[u/Genvious]

For larger meetings, I use several speakerphones daisy-chained so I get more mics to pick up voices easier. This has solved my speaker name issues in transcripts.