Transforming Transcripts into Guidebooks
This resource demonstrates how to convert Q&A-focused discussions like panels and fireside chats into comprehensive guides that teams can easily share and reference, making valuable insights accessible long after the original presentation.
Introduction
Traditional note-taking, while helpful for learning, often results in disorganized information that gets lost in our digital archives. Instead of relying on hastily written notes, what if we could transform transcripts from valuable sessions into structured guidebooks? Stay focused, absorb knowledge effectively, and easily recall key takeaways from the sessions you participate in (and even those you had to skip!).
Let's get started. First, let's define the goal and scope of the problem this resource will focus on.
Goal
Turn webinar transcripts into meaningful guides.
Scope
Focus on Q&A-focused discussions.
The Approach
Our guide should include the meaty nuggets from the Q&A and none of the discussion of the weather. Questions that are speculative or irrelevant to the main topic should be removed.
Prompt Engineering Techniques
Use prompt-chaining to handle discrete tasks
- Pre-processing the transcript to remove filler words and irrelevant discussion.
- Transform into a Q&A format, identifying discrete answers within the transcript
- Remove speculative and irrelevant questions
- Transform into a best practices guide
Model
OpenAI's gpt-4o or other capable model
Pre-processing the Transcript
In my example transcript the discussions stayed on topic so minimal cleanup was needed. The LLM will transform the transcript into a Q&A format and remove filler words in a single prompt.
Steps
- Copy your transcript or save it to a file.
Tip: YouTube videos have a transcript in the description. You can click "show transcript" then highlight and copy the transcript"
- Paste your prompt into ChatGPT
- Update the placeholders in red
Best Practice: If the session was more unstructured you may need to break into two prompts. The first should maintain the transcript format but remove unnecessary text. Try prefacing each questions with "Q:" and each answer with "A:" then execute a second prompt to provide a list of questions asked with answers listed as bullets.
- Review the output and refine, as needed
Prompt
Context
This is the transcript from [session title]. [describe speakers]. [session description].
Instruction
Read the transcript multiple times. Then transform and cleanup the script. Provide questions asked to the panel as headers and convert answers provided into bullet points. Do not rewrite answers, keep original wording but remove filler discussion not relevant to the questions. Remove introductions and closing statements. Compare your updated script to the original to ensure original answers are preserved and not rewritten and that key information is preserved.
Transcript
[paste your transcript here]
Creating a Guide
I found the Q&A output was quite clean and only had one question that seemed irrelevant and speculative so I combined prompts 3 and 4 into a single step.
Steps
- Execute the follow-up prompt
Tip: Depending on your area of interest you may update your sample question or the types of questions you want in your output.
- Review the output and refine, as needed
- Save the output in a content management system like Confluence, or build it into a Gamma.
- Share with others interested in the topic so they can learn with you!
Prompt
Reformat the Q&A format into a guidebook. Remove any questions that are irrelevant to the session's topic or speculative such as "How do you think this industry will evolve in the next 6 months?". Format specific tips as recommendations in the guidebook. General responses should be written more as suggestions and possibilities to consider. Identify the most important information and include as callouts. Include an introduction that includes the session title, date and speakers that the guide was based on and a disclaimer that the content is based on the session.
Here's an example of a guide I created using this exact workflow.
What's next?
- Continue to refine the prompts as you use them on various types of discussions
- Automate the workflow
- Enable a single topic to be updated based on and crediting multiple discussions
All possible with AI!