On the weekend of February 29 - March 3, Mount Holyoke College was host to the Future in Communications 2008 Conference where 65 alums and 25 students gathered together to discuss the future of careers in journalism and communications. You can read more about it on the College's News & Event page. I attended the keynote speeches, because I was asked to record the audio but I had wanted to hear Elizabeth Spiers anyway. She has been involved in a number of successful blogs, including being one of the founding editors of Gawker. I am glad I was able to attend despite having a horrible cold because the talks were very interesting.
I borrowed a Marantz digital recorder (PMD660) from the Communications department. It is the same model used by NPR field reporters. It has a variety of options and recorded straight to MP3 format. I was able to plug into the sound system at Gamble auditorium for the first speaker, Priscilla Painton ’80, and get a perfect signal. Unfortunately, we did not arrange for microphones for the audience during the question and answer session. The questions could not be heard and they were not repeated so I had to cut out that entire segment of the presentation. I probably could have plugged my ac Book into the sound system and recorded straight into Garageband. Instead I connected the recorder via an USB cable and copied the files over which I edited in Garageband '08 which includes podcast specific features.
On the second talk I was not able to plug into the sound system at Willits. Instead I set up a microphone next to the podium alongside the sound system microphone and that worked out great for the most part, too. We still had the same problem with the Q&A session at the end of the talk where we had no mics for the audience. There were not as many questions, but the answers that the speaker, Elizabeth Spiers, gave pretty much stood on their own so I left them in. She spells out her recipe for a successful blog. It basically boils down to finding your niche that you are passionate and knowledgeable about because you are going to have to write 6-10 relevant articles every day.
The audio files are hosted on a separate page on the Alumnae Asociation web site. You can use the audios players on the web page or download the files to your MP3 player. If you have any interest in journalism or web communications I think you will enjoy the speeches.