Scribing Role Defined

When we talk about scribing in the facilitation sense, we are talking about capturing the ideas and decisions produced by participants in a facilitated meeting. This mostly involves capturing long lists of ideas and helping the facilitator and participants choose the best ideas from those lists.

Capturing long lists of ideas
The scriber needs to accurately capture the ideas generated. This is often done with flip charts and markers. It can also be done electronically on a laptop with the screen projected on the wall so all can see what is being captured. The scribe should capture as accurately as possible the ideas generated, but does not need to capture verbatim all comments or ideas. Part of the skill in effective scribing is to distill the sometimes loquacious ideas of participants while capturing the essence of their ideas. The scribe needs to be continually checking back with the participants to be sure the captured ideas accurately reflect the participant's ideas.

Upcoming posts will talk about how the scribe helps the participants and the facilitator choose from the lists and work closely with facilitator. We will also talk about the skills of the scribe, tools for the scribe, and other topics generated by the comments.