Day 1 of the academic arm of the roadshow concludes with the first of the interviews in the bag, and the first serious acid test for the tour’s design.
Recording equipment: Belkin GoStudio
The star of the day’s equipment is the Belkin GoStudio (link opens a new window). Weighing in at an impressively cheap USD$150 ($AUD180) for the feature set, the GoStudio provides a good mix of complexity for custom settings and a clean visual interface when in action. Set up takes a few seconds, and the on-the-fly tweaking of the master level is useful if you’re watching the audio constantly redlight as you speak (or not blink at all). Given today’s interview featured a subtle background noise of construction sites and CBD traffic (muted, but present), the microphones picked up the conversation and little else in the way of background chatter.
Nice work from Belkin with the GoStudio. Does the job, looks the part, and a good acquisition
Recording Equipment: iPod Classic
It’s a touch awkward to start up in the docking station, and I’m not 100% happy with the responsiveness of the control wheel as an interface for triggering the voice recording system. On the other hand, no problems with a 120 gig of space when it’s recording native WAV files (~300mb for 30 minutes). Might need to tweak the settings on iTunes to convince it to leave the audio files on the drive, although even that’s not a major concern with the external HDD.
I’m tempted to test pilot the iPod Touch at some point just to ensure that I can comfortably operate both in the heat of an interview set up.
Interview Questions and Technique
I’ve never been quite so grateful for my background as a university journalist plus those three English subjects in my arts degree (EN151 and EN152 – a year’s training in various academic writing styles, and EN260 which looked at the interview, spoken word and transcription of real speech to written speech). There’s a few points where I need to remember to drop out of the conversation when the speaker starts as I’m framing the question, and my hyperkineticky voice needs to slow down a warp speed or two.
Questions held up under the strain of live conversation, and ebbed and flowed with a really nice sequence of ideas that led naturally from one point to the next. There’s one part journalist background, and one part comfort with chaos that let me sit back, let the conversation flow, and assume that the content would get covered along the way.
All up, a pleasing start to the heavy lifting end of the tour. Tomorrow, my commercial marketing side resurfaces as I attend the From Big Ideas to Entrepreneurial Success by interactiveminds. Great thing about the event is that it promises to be Twitter friendly – #IM0907
