The Scribe Vibe: Distilling the Signal From the Noise
“Hey, you’re good with words. Do you want to scribe for some of the workshops we’ve got coming up?” asked my team lead in the spring of 2020.
I was relatively new to my job at Cisco. I wanted to make my bones, prove that I had value, and I certainly didn’t want to be seen as someone who would flatly refuse work of any kind. Everyone loves an enthusiastic team player, right? And indeed, a career in tech can condition you to want to do everything you can to make yourself utterly indispensable in the name of job security. So, I put on my best can-do face, gritted my teeth, and threw myself headlong into the task of scribing.
Scribing, for those uninitiated, is something akin to the role of being not just a note-taker in meetings, but of capturing the essence of what goes down when people are interacting. It’s about divining the essence of not only what people are saying, but why they’re saying it, and what they truly mean. It’s not just simply transcribing the words.
It’s true that more and more jobs are getting automated out of existence these days. Writing is not one of them. If you don’t believe me, have a look at any old automated transcription of any recorded video or audio call. It’s kind of a mess. As of this writing, the machines are still pretty bad at getting the various cases of words right. They have trouble getting around people’s particular quirks or speech, such as stuttering, and the ubiquitous “um”s and “uhhh”s that festoon the speech patterns of people who are talking in a plain-spoken, unscripted way. It less resembles a transcript and more a form of surreal poetry. And although this may regularly lead to unintentionally hilarious results, that doesn’t mean that it’s a good replacement to a pair of sharp ears and a set of agile typing fingers.
As a scribe, you’re not only a reporter, but an interpreter.
When scribing, your first job is to actively listen. You dissolve your sense of self into the state of being a pure, egoless observer, and a conductor for the divination of meaning. To make it sound less like the words of a yoga instructor, you find what matters, and take that down. Your subjects will say a lot of things that are basically verbal garnish, such as words getting repeated or rephrasing things they’ve previously stated. The key is to hone in on what they convey when they respond.
At first, I did indeed try to capture every single word. Sure, 10 out of 10 for effort, but minus several dozen for its usefulness in the aftermath. You wind up with a huge pile of words that have no actual interpreted meaning behind them. And after all, if you want “just the facts,” that’s what the recordings are for, warts and all.
Get ready, and get organized!
If you’re good, you’ll develop a rapport with the teammates for whom you’re scribing. Be their friend. They need you and you need them, so it’s best to get a sense of their conversational style. It’s your foundation.
Another thing I learned very quickly was that if you’re doing a scripted interview, have a list of the interview questions prepared in advance. I can’t emphasize this list’s usefulness enough. Get that list, read over it at least twice before interview time. If you’re prepared for what is going to be asked, you’re ready to capture that essence of what your subject is saying. It’s like going for a drink of water and pouring the water into a glass, or just pouring that water out all over the counter. Structure is useful. It’s much easier to drink water from a vessel, and it’s much easier to parse information when you already haver a structure in place.
Words matter, but some words matter more than others.
Any good host or performer needs to be able to “read the room.” That is, you get a sense of how people express themselves and how they convey their values. Everyone is different, but everyone also conveys their nature by how they act and speak. You might have an interview subject who is very chatty, and opinionated, and full of flavor. Those people are always the most fun and very easy to read, not to mention quotable.
Others might be very unforthcoming, and respond to questions in simple, or even binary “yes or no” answers. True, those people are harder to read, but by behaving that way, they might be guarded in nature, and value the custody of their information. That tells you that when they do give an opinion about a security issue, for example, you’ll want to pay close attention and capture it.
In other cases you might get people who talk in nothing but buzzwords and inside jargon. I won’t lie, it’s hard to get real substance from those folks, but if and when they drop the veneer of corporate-speak and say something genuine, it’s usually pure gold.
Let’s go to the instant replay…
Okay, I admit it, recordings DO have value after all. That value comes when things are blowing by so quickly and you just can’t keep up. In times like that, it’s best to put a some kind of “note to self” and note the timecode inside of your meeting. From there, it’s easy to go back to the recording and pick out something good that you may not have had time to accurately capture in the moment. I’ve done it plenty of times.
Context is key, and the golden goose.
Every now and then, you’ll get a subject that lays golden, insightful eggs for you that can define an entire project. You don’t get them every time, but when you do, put them on a pedestal. Interviewees are at their most fruitful when they’re honest and forthright. Let them have their day, they’re helping you and they deserve it. And of course, if you deal with the same subject matter repeatedly, you will get to know how and what to focus on. There really is great stuff out there when you open yourself to it.
I’ll wrap this with an example of a great golden egg I got from an interview subject that was very frank, casual, and forthcoming during an interview panel discussion about the role of Security Endpoint Admins, and how he expressed his sympathy for their plight:
“Here, I think this will help in understanding the Endpoint Admin.
Do you know how they built the pyramids? Thousands of slaves would lash ropes around 20-ton limestone blocks. They would then lay huge logs in front of the blocks, and use the logs as a sort of reverse ‘wheel’ — kind of how we use conveyor belts today. For hundreds of miles, across burning sand, these slaves would drag these blocks, being whipped and beaten when their strength flagged.
Who is the Endpoint Admin in this? They’re the logs.”
See what I mean about those golden nuggets of frankness and honesty? They’re as good as gold.
Remember — being a scribe isn’t just being a recorder. It’s your job to separate the signal from the noise. Happy scribing.
Oh, and don’t forget to stretch before and after. If your hands hurt, use alternating heat, ice, and rest. Carpal tunnel syndrome is a real pain!
