“Meetings suck because we let them,” wrote tech and business writer Christopher Null in his PCWorld piece back in November 2013. Since then, a lot of tech has improved, the note-taking and audio recording apps have multiplied, and global web conferencing is old news.

The importance of meetings, however, remained the same. If “we don’t take our meetings seriously,” wrote Null, “if we ignore what participants ask or say, fail to document the meeting’s takeaways, or forget to follow up afterward — they might as well not have happened.”

Let’s talk about why it’s important to document meetings, how to do it, and how to make the best use of the tech available.