communication department

By Joseph M. Humbert, Treasurer, Webweaver, and Immediate Past President, East Bay Chapter

In June 2006, during the final chapter meeting before summer, I was installed as president of the East Bay Chapter STC in Northern California. I had recently seen a video podcast of a U.C. Berkeley physics class lecture and had thought about the possibility of podcasting our chapter programs. I asked our speaker at that final meeting if she was willing to have her program recorded for a podcast—and she agreed. Based on this one confirmation, I thought I could pursue podcasting speaker programs beginning in the fall. Little did I realize that hers would be the minority opinion. Since then, of the nine speakers at our meetings, only three have agreed to be recorded.

Advantages of Podcasting

We have about 130 members in our chapter, yet only about twenty to twenty-five come to the monthly meetings. There is a core group of about ten die-hards (mainly chapter officers) who attend all meetings. A few others come to one or more—but not all—meetings, and most members don’t come at all. What are members’s reasons for not attending talks on topics related to their profession? To come to an evening meeting after working all day admittedly takes extra effort. If you have a family with kids, it becomes even more difficult. So my main reason for podcasting was to reach out to those members who wanted to keep in touch with the chapter but were unable to attend meetings.

Early on, our leadership discussed the idea that podcasts might actually keep members away. (Why go to a meeting when you can download a recording later?) I hoped that this would not be the case, and, as it turned out, it wasn’t. For one thing, we didn’t preannounce when we were podcasting. We also pointed out on our podcast Web page that you can’t ask a question or clarify a point while listening to a podcast—you have to be at the meeting for that. That said, if you attended a meeting but missed a point, you can use the podcast to review it later.

Members Only?

At first we thought we would make the podcast available to East Bay Chapter STC members only. For our first two podcasts, we set up password access accordingly. At a later administrative council meeting, the idea of members-only access was questioned. After all, our meetings are not like those of some secret society—they are open to all STC members (of any chapter) and even to nonmember guests. What if the nonmembers who attended a meeting wanted to review it through the podcast? To provide easy access to the information, our podcasts are now open to all who visit our Web site.

Nuts and Bolts

In the summer of 2006, when our leadership voted to spend money to explore the idea of podcasting speaker programs, no one in our group had any experience in recording, editing, or posting a podcast. I volunteered to take that on. While video podcasts were discussed, the costs involved (buying a camera, lights, and so on) seemed prohibitive. Hence, we decided to first pursue audio recordings.

Software

I noticed other audio podcasts on the Web were posted as MP3 files, so I looked for software that would record or export in this format. I started to explore Sound Editor in the Roxio Easy Media Suite when I hit the first of many bumps as president—our very first speaker in September had to cancel. This actually turned out to be fortuitous. Knowing we were exploring podcasting, our vice president of programs found Jerry Franklin, a speaker who actually did some podcasting himself. Jerry agreed to speak on a relatively new open-source tool for podcasting: Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net). He agreed to be our very first podcast speaker!

Audacity is a free program, so I downloaded it and found it to be very easy to use. It records from a microphone plugged into a laptop computer. But, being open source, there is no manual and the help file is minimal. Although Jerry would explain how to use the program in his talk, I needed to know beforehand and e-mailed him several times for information.

During recording, you can see a waveform of the sound input. As I edited the presentation after the meeting, I found the editing features relatively straightforward for cutting and pasting clips. Audacity also has a number of sound-editing effects that can be applied to your recording (such as removing unwanted background noise, or making your speaker sound like a robot or a chipmunk—if that’s your idea of a good time!).

Microphones

While testing Audacity, I used a corded microphone, but this wasn’t going to work for speakers who move around the room. I began looking for a wireless microphone, one that could be attached to a lapel. That way the speaker could use both hands and also be free to walk around. At first, I looked at music shops hoping to find a cordless microphone like singers use on stage, but these were very expensive.

On the Internet, I looked at many microphones of different price ranges. Based on price and customer satisfaction, I chose the Azden WMS-PRO battery-operated wireless microphone. It works flawlessly. Before the podcast, I clip the microphone to the speaker’s lapel, corded to a transmitter that the speaker slips into his pocket. I then plug the wireless receiver into the microphone jack of my laptop. After an initial sound check for volume, we are good to go.

One “problem” with the Azden is that it is a very local recording device (that is, it picks up the speaker’s voice very well but it doesn’t pick up anyone more than a few feet away, such as the audience). When an audience member asks a question, the question is recorded, but so faintly that it can’t be heard. Knowing this, I tell the speaker to repeat the question before answering or to frame the answer to reveal the question. But this is unnatural for some speakers who, in the heat of a presentation, will just answer a question even though it is inaudible to the audience. Another issue is that we have only one microphone, so we can only podcast events featuring one speaker.

Editing and Exporting

Once the raw recording comes home, the fun begins. But the fun is relative because, as editor, you have to listen to the entire presentation—often more than once. This can be tedious. The good news is that you immediately become a subject matter expert on the topic! The first thing I do when editing is back up the raw recording to a CD or an external hard drive in case something happens to the original recording on my laptop while editing. The next thing I do is remove any humming or buzzing noise that may overlay the entire recording. Next, I adjust for uniform volume. I then cut out the “blank” spots where questions were asked. I also delete any obvious “umm’s” the speaker utters while forming his or her thoughts. One speaker announced in the middle of the presentation that what he was about to say should stay in the room, so I edited the podcast accordingly. An hour of raw recording might reduce to fifty minutes of final edited material.

Audacity records and edits in a native file format. But once you have the final recording edited to your satisfaction, you can export it into a WAV or MP3 format. The latter is a smaller file format than WAV (about ten times as small). This is important if people are going to be able to download the file in a reasonable time. There are export settings in Audacity that squeeze the MP3 into the smallest file possible for maximum sound playback. After many trials and errors, I found the following settings work best for us:

In Preferences:

• Quality tab: Default sample rate of 44,100 Hz, default sample format of 16 bits
• File Format tab: MP3 export setup box—MP3 library version LAME v3.96, bit rate of 64

With these settings, an hour of edited recording time will be 29 MB in an MP3 file. With DSL, this will take two to three minutes to download—you can have a cup of coffee while you wait. If you have a dial-up modem, forget about it or go shopping.

LAME is a software plug-in that allows Audacity to export MP3 files. Because of copyrights, LAME isn’t included in Audacity but can be downloaded from the Audacity site (see Audacity’s help file for specific instructions). The first time you try to export into an MP3 file, Audacity will ask you where a specific LAME file is on your computer. Locate it, and you’re in (you only need to do this once).

Contract Agreement

Besides the hardware and software needed to produce a podcast, we knew we needed a written agreement or contract for both parties—the chapter and the speaker—to sign. Initially, we set a time limit of one year and provided that no money was to be exchanged for the podcast rights.

After four speakers, the fifth speaker rebuked us because our contract made no specific provision for copyright protection of the speaker’s material. Because of our limited legal knowledge, we had left out this important provision. We contacted the STC office for guidance. It was still in the process of formulating a Society-wide policy, so we continued developing the contract on our own. After coming up with specific copyright-protection clauses (for the speaker and the chapter), we put a written disclaimer on our Web site and a recorded disclaimer at the beginning of each podcast that spelled out the copyright protection, in addition to removing the one-year time limit. Our two previous podcast speakers (who had signed our original contract) graciously signed the new contract. If any Tieline readers have legal expertise in this area and would like to review our contract, we would appreciate the help.

To Podcast or Not to Podcast

Of the nine speakers since September 2006 who could be podcast, only three agreed to be. One backed out because our contract did not mention copyright protection, another speaker had proprietary material being used for a current project, and the others just seemed wary. Though we never question why speakers don’t want to be podcast (that would be an interesting survey one day), we did notice that, on the STC Web site itself, only two podcasts were posted at the time.

This is still uncharted territory for most speakers, but as podcasts become more commonplace, future speakers may feel more comfortable with the process and its end product. We hope so, because we believe these recorded presentations can help the entire technical community.

Joe Humbert earned a technical communication certificate with distinction from U.C. Berkeley Extension. A senior member of STC, he has been an active member of the East Bay chapter, serving as webweaver, treasurer, and immediate past president.

For more information on podcasting or to help with the East Bay Chapter STC podcasting contract, contact Joe.