Somehow, I managed to act as Secretary for the meeting despite not being present in person. Of course, it helps that I can always start with the document of the previous meeting as a framework and that many of the bits of routine business are boilerplate.
I don't blame Skype for the problem here, aside from the mysterious way in which some microphone/speaker/computer combinations just won't work with it. It's certainly the only practical way we could hold conference calls nowadays.