[PLUG] Transcription of Q/A sessions following PLUG speaker presentations.

Geoff Burling llywrch at agora.rdrop.com
Sat Aug 3 20:44:38 UTC 2002


On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, Richard Steffens wrote:

> Eli Stair wrote:
>
> > When a presentation is given, someone has the task of making sure the entirety
> > is recorded (audio).
> <snip>
> > I would be willing to do the
> > work of recording/transcribing the meeting, and anything else I'm capable of.
>
> I think this is a great idea. I've been in a couple of meetings where a
> transcription was made and they were very helpful later on. These would
> be great for those who can't make it to the meeting.
>
> There are some technical points of which to be aware. My wife
> transcribes interviews captured on audio tape. If you've never done it
> before you might be surprised that it turns out to be non-trivial to get
> a recording that can be transcribed. Good microphones and their proper
> placement are critical. The preferred medium is standard cassette as
> opposed to mini cassette. It usually takes my wife 4 hours of typing to
> transcribe 1 hour of audio, and that's at 85-95 words per minute.

I think what Richard is proposing would be overkill for what we need.
If someone were to take notes on the Q&A at the end of meetings -- something
we supposedly learn to do in college -- & publish those, that would be
sufficient. After all, the accounts of the philosopher Wittgenstein's
lectures were recorded by people who were not trained professionals
like Richard's wife.

David Mandel used to keep & publish minutes for the PLUG meetings back
in 1995-97. Something like this is easily doable, & could be published
on the website. I do have an example online of this on the PLUG web site --
http://www.pdxlinux.org/index.php/meeting/letter14May1998.

Geoff






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