Caught this little snippet of wisdom on David Maister's blog this week.

Always volunteer to take the minutes of meetings, and to do the first drafts of proposed initiatives or reports. Not only will you get credit for volunteering to do things on behalf of others, but you get control of what's recorded. You are now part of the decision-making process. He or she who writes the history gets to make history.

I've been doing this for years, basically as a mechanism to curb my introvertedness in new settings (and familiar ones). Introverts typically like things to do to keep them engaged when they'd rather turn inward. Turns out, there are added benefits, like being part of writing history.