---
title: "Recording STC Chapter Presentations"
date: 2006-09-08
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2006/09/08/recording-stc-chapter-presentations/
---
# Recording STC Chapter Presentations
You go to all the trouble to coordinate a speaker with knowledge, appeal, and relevance to technical writing. And then only 20% of your members come to the meeting. Why not record the presentation and make it available digitally online?

It's rather simple to record the presenter, as long as the presentation is somewhat speech-like and not entirely interactive.

To record your chapter meetings:

1. Get an Olympus digital recorder from a store like Radio Shack. Any digital recorder will do, as long as it satisfies two conditions: 1. You can plug a microphone into it, and 2. You can extract the file via a USB cable.

2. Get a lapel microphone to hook into the digital recorder. Radio Shack often has this too.

3. After attaching it to your presenter — usually via a little belt clip — tell the presenter to do two things: A. Try to speak for a good 20-30 minutes before launching into heavy Q&A. B. If and when questions are asked, ask the presenter to repeat the question.

4. After downloading the audio file to your computer, you will want to edit the sound. Use Audacity, a free sound editor to do this. Check out the tutorials on how-to-podcast-tutorial.com to learn how to use the editor. Edit out the gaps, and some of the uhmns and ahhs and coughs etc. Don't go crazy with the editing, but expect to put in about 2-3 hrs of post-production work.