FUDCon:How To Transcribe a Session

What

Transcribing sessions and activities is a great way to encourage interaction and involvement with people who could not make it to a FUDCon. It also gives a working log of the session and combines the best of both IRC and Face to Face meetings. There is most likely quite some undiscovered potential that other contributors will ultimately discover. We can also score cyperpunk points for creating virtual spaces linked with real ones.

How

Transcribing is a simple process. While doing a session, one or two people volunteer to spend their time transcribing and summarizing what is being said. By keeping a running flow on the conversation, it makes it possible to get real time information on a running session. Feel free to summarize long statements and strip away some verbal cues. Since information in the signal is lost on IRC anyways, the goal is to keep the flow moving rather than contracting terminally fatal RSI from typing too much.

When transcribing, there will also be people commenting on IRC in response to comments. Your role is to bring up comments on IRC in person to include them in the conversation. While more than one person may take up this responsibility, it takes a bit of time and energy to actually monitor IRC while a real life conversation is in progress. Meanwhile RL participants are going to be engrossed in their conversation, so it will take a dedicated transcriber on two to bring things to their attention.

Finally, as a transcriber, your most important role is to take general meeting notes using a meeting bot. While each participant may want to use their own notes as normal, it helps people interact by having meeting notes develop online in real time. This is just a good documentation process that using a unified resource includes everyone and can translate a high bandwidth session into a simple low bandwidth one.

General Tips

• When saying 'foo says:' use the Real Life name if possible. This prevents highlites in IRC and allows watchers to differentiate between RL activity and IRC activity.
• Pick a session where you have less reason to participate as an active member. Providing your input is always appreciated but it can distract you from transcriptions
• Try to find someone to take over in case you develop cramps
• Remember to take stress breaks, try not to do two sessions in a row.
• Consult with the wiki to find free sessions, and ask Yaakov or Mel for a place to go if you're looking to help
• Volunteer!