A story of conversationsand the notes that never get written.
Hi there.
If you are reading this, you probably spend a good part of your day talking, taking calls, at meetings or in lectures.
And you have probably felt the choice that comes with it. Either you are present: listening, thinking, asking the right question. Or you are taking notes. Rarely both.
We never managed both. Not at university, not at work. So we started to wonder where that choice came from, and whether it has to exist at all.
People have always written down what was said and someone had to stop listening to do it.
Tiro, the secretary of the Roman orator Cicero, invents a shorthand to keep up with speeches in the Senate. The first note taker was a person whose whole job was to listen.
The dictating machine arrives in offices. A voice can be stored now, but someone still has to sit down and type it out.
Henry Gantt draws his chart, and projects get a tool of their own. Every bar is filled in by hand, from what was agreed in a meeting.
The Rolodex lands on desks. The people you meet get a tool too, and again someone writes every card.
We talk through almost everything. Then we still retype it into the CRM, the project board and the to-do list. A team's conversations are its most valuable information, and the least captured.
AI learned to listen and then everyone added a gadget.
In the last few years, AI got good enough to understand a conversation: who said what, what was decided, what was promised. That is a real change. The first time we saw how good a note could be, we knew the old choice was over.
But most new note takers answered it with something to buy and wear: a pendant, a pin, a box on the table, or a bot that joins your call. We think the phone in your pocket and the computer on your desk are enough.
AI pointed at one problem: turning what was said into what gets done.
We point AI at the work nobody has time for. One conversation holds more than it seems:
Four things we will not trade whatever we build next.
Nothing typed twice
What was said once is written once, and it goes where it belongs.
The human check
AI writes the first draft and you confirm or fix it because human intelligence makes the call.
Private by design
No bot joins your call, and we never train AI with your conversations.
No gadgets
Your phone and your computer are enough. There is nothing to buy, wear or charge.
The palest ink is better than the best memory.Chinese proverb
A small team with big conversations built in Amsterdam.
See you soon.
The Parley Notes team
Parley Notes Labs · Amsterdam