2010.03.07
It’s been quite a while since I blogged about audio and video production. So, I’ll take advantage of an email I received from Robin Browne to let this one slip in.
In his email, Robin says he’s been using the internal microphones in his Zoom H2 portable digital recorder to capture presentations with good results and hoping to take it to the next level — excellent audio. He asks for recommendations, perhaps a wireless lapel mic, to get a high quality recording of a speaker at a conference or other such event.
While a wireless lapel mic offers freedom for the speaker, remember that it adds complexity for you as an audio engineer. You’ll need an electrical outlet and an out-of-the-way place to put extra equipment (the receiver station for the wireless mic) in addition to the cabling and audio recorder.
A decent quality wireless lapel mic starts around $500. The good quality ones are more than $800. Contrast that with a good wired lapel mic which is about $300. It’s not ideal to tether the speaker to a spot, however you might be able to work with a willing speaker to limit their movements to a specific area within reach of the cables you buy. By the way, I’m partial to Audio-Technica lapel mics, though I have rented Sennheiser and Shure lapel mics with good results.
Remember that no matter which type of mic system you decide on, always buy good quality cables. This is particularly true if you’re connecting to a mini-plug input like on the Zoom H2 recorder, though it remains true for XLR and quarter-inch inputs as well. Another rule of thumb is to go with the shortest possible cables. Of course, if you think you’ll need a 25 foot reach, don’t restrict yourself to a 10 foot cable — just be sure that you invest in a better quality cable to avoid signal loss.
I’m hoping Bob and I are able to connect to record a new episode of the Canadian Podcast Buffet this week. If so, we’ll talk more about this.
2009.02.14
If you follow the Canadian Podcast Buffet, you know that Bob Goyetche and I have gone out of our way to prevent discussions of money on the show since it began. Over the last few months, though, we’ve allowed that topic to trickle in and recently, we promoted what we’ve been calling the Money Episode. We invited listeners that have made money through their podcasts to contribute the “monetization” models they’ve adopted and their experiences with them. Speculation was not welcome; we wanted reality, not fantasy.
We recorded the show on Wednesday. It includes nine comments in all, each one exploring a different approach to making money from social media. That makes each model proven. To what degree? We cannot say since, as Bob pointed out, only one person shared their actual gross revenue. I will say this, though; none of the models shared was based on CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions, an approach that pays money based on the number of groupings of one-thousand downloads).
I’m very excited about this show because it really does push the conversation forward and provides an informative destination for the people that (on their first awareness of podcasting) ask the question “how do I make money from it”. I think that it will be to the money conversation what our September 2006 car episode with Julien Smith was to the Social Networking conversation.
CPB episode 130 will be published at 6:00pmET tomorrow (February 15).
2008.05.01
Whitney Hoffman and I spoke Sunday evening about the debate over the fee for the upcoming PodCamp Boston. It seems that many people are quite upset about the fee and have used the argument that communities shouldn’t charge its members to participate in events. That’s when we started to talk about physical communities and financial support they request. Immediately, several communities came to mind including my own neighbourhood which asks households to contribute $5 to sustain the activities group (the fee is requested whether you participate in neighbourhood activities or not).
Perhaps the most significant — and oldest — community to expect members to contribute is the church. Here’s an organization that does a collection from its congregation each week. To be fair, synagogues have fundraising drives to sustain community activities. It’s worth noting that these are communities that people are born into, not specifically adopted the way the social media community is. Many would argue that these are communities that will play the guilt card.
Bob Goyetche said this past fall that social media is a hobby and in order to participate you need some money to buy at least the most basic of technology making us a community of disposable incomes of some degree or another. Whitney supports this statement by offering demographic data that shows an overwhelming majority of PodCamp (that’s free PodCamp) attendees are professionals in their 30′s. An increasing number travel great distances, stay in hotels and eat out to attend the events.
Smaller PodCamps like PodCamp Ottawa can be organized in a few days and run at absolutely no charge. And because they are locally focused, it allows people in a geographic region to connect and form their own community without having to travel and stay in hotels.
PodCamp is a proven model. An event fee equivalent to a few Starbucks coffees won’t change the content or delivery. It will sustain it.
