113 N. Market St., Champaign, IL 61820

From WEFT Wiki

Contents 1 Initial comments 2 The effort of recording a meeting 3 The effect of recording a meeting

Initial comments

(Does anyone here use the wiki's talk feature?)

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Recording a 2-hour 50 person meeting is hard to do well. It's not worth recording meetings.

Suppose I'd stealthily recorded the last meeting:

• Who would be after my skin for not getting their permission first?
• Who would want to listen to it?

—2006-12-15 15:40:44 User:Feldman

At least a few people are using the talk feature. When you use talk pages, please sign your comments by typing ~~~~ at the end. —HorsePunchKid→龜 14:44, 15 December 2006 (PST)

This whole notion of recording meetings came out of accusations of who said what when and in what context. As far as I'm concerned that is not good rationale for expending scarce resources, time, or storage space for this endeavor.

Records of meetings are called minutes. Minutes should contain the subject discussed and outcome if there was any. Nothing else is pertinent to that document.

As far as historical documentation goes I've never heard anything in a meeting that would merit the effort.

Our meetings get complicated enough and too often run overtime. I don't believe that a new associate who is told his comittment is 2 hours every 3 months (providing you make all meetings) would appreciate consistently having their time continually infringed upon. It would discourage new attendance. Recording meetings only slows down things. —2007-01-03 15:25:21 User:Bluedrew

The effort of recording a meeting

This is an important point. Recording a 2+ hour meeting of 50+ people requires far more than a handheld dictation recorder. If it is going to be done, it has to be done well or else the effort has been wasted. As I see the situation, "doing it well" means a few things:

1. The recording is clear and intelligible -- good signal at all times.
2. All speakers can be heard and understood, even if there are simultaneous voices.
3. The process of recording does not, itself, interrupt the meeting.

So this implies quite a few things:

1. Recording must be managed and monitored to ensure the quality of the recording.
2. The recordist cannot expect to participate in the meeting.
3. The recordist does not have the option, like other Associates, to not attend the meeting.
4. Recording and/or sound reinforcement equipment must be set up in advance of the start of the meeting.
5. If WEFT doesn't have sufficient (and appropriate) equipment for the task, it must be purchased or donated.
6. The AEC / meeting chair must manage the meeting to facilitate the recording.
7. This would grow the scope of the AEC's responsibilities.

On the simple side, this could mean that the meetings would be run like presentations: the AEC chair has a (cardiod) mic, there is a speaker's mic (wired or wireless), and both signals are mixed together both to a house PA and the recording mechanism. Of course, this means all speakers would be required to speak one at a time at a speaker's stand or WEFT would have to invest in a wireless mic and a whole lot of batteries. The method of our meeting would explicitly change, and the recording process would be the sole focus of the format. Additionally, the AEC chair would be required to enforce speaking guidelines: no one can speak out of turn, no cross conversation, everyone must wait in line to speak.

The more complex side might be a series of omnidirectional mics scattered across the room on booms. This would require significantly more setup time, a significant quantity of equipment (including purchases), and an even more active recordist to raise the 'active' mic and attenuate 'unactive' mics as the meeting progresses. If used with a house PA, this scenario is much more prone to feedback. To sufficiently cover a room the size of the one we have been meeting in, I'd estimate might require... 6-10 well-placed omnis? I'm pretty sure WEFT doesn't currently have this.

The time to carry all the equipment in, setup, tear down, and haul away must be taken into consideration. This increases the volunteer hours put into the meetings as well as increases our rental cost on the space, assuming we have a rental cost. If we don't have a rental cost, the increased duration of the meetings at the very least affects how we can schedule our meeting in a space that presumably hosts other events as well.

I have a general concern that this is a lot of effort to little positive gain. Most specifically I see no gain whatsoever to the operation of WEFT as a radio station. Further, I am concerned that we will see another mandated task that will be dropped after a short time due to a missing intersection of volunteer interest and volunteer effort and then trumpeted as an intentional failing of the Associates / AEC / AEC Chair / Board / whomever.

In short: there's a lot of effort involved, a lot of time involved, and possibly a financial investment for what (IMO) is a highly diminished return.

--Jay 15:03, 15 December 2006 (PST)

I have done audio recordings and editings of lectures and discussions as part of developing a web course on Nanotechnology on an NSF funded project at Beckman and it's not difficult at all. Neither does it imply the recordist not to participate. You just need to monitor time if in need to change the tape and/or audio levels. It works clockwork. Doing it once is enoguh of a practice so we can get a list of people to be able to volunteer to record, it's fun and we are always guaranteed with so many Airshifters and tech savvy people at the Station to have at least one who can do the task.--Yanni Chill 15:35, 2 January 2007 (PST)

Setup takes minimal time 4-5 minutes tops with all the checks.

We can actually Videorecord the meetings which would mean we have a video camera and a tripod and two or three microphones, one for the facilitator of the meeting two for the participating audience. Instead of making list of speakers people could come up to a Podium next to the facilitator and speak. This can incite us to ave more orderly meetings.

As a self respecting Radio Station we should acquire that equipment to make video recordings and archives not just of our quarterly Associates meetings or Board meetings but also of our WEFT venues, benefits, parties etc. Remember WEFT generates parts of our communities history and as such there is historical value to recording such events. The City Council does it and broadcasts it and they require their members to accept as they join that they should be ok to be videotaped and broadcasted. I think we should put in the WEFT's Associates contract and Board of Directors bylaws and SOP's a clause that would state that we should accept to be video/audio recorded.

We are a public community entity and being as trasnaprent and open as we want to be we shouldn't have second thoughts of not putting our proceedings and functions in public. This will increase our outreach and listener/volunteer basis.--Yanni Chill 15:35, 2 January 2007 (PST)

The above sound like a great way to run meetings. Batteries last for 2 hours at least so we won't have much problem with that, let alone that we can use the format where there is one speaker podium where people come and address the group. People can still interrupt or cross talk but without them having a mic they will only be heard as a distant background voice. --Yanni Chill 15:35, 2 January 2007 (PST)

This sounds very advanced. For the moment we can start with a simple setup. Like One camera, 2 or 3 mics and take it from there. --Yanni Chill 15:35, 2 January 2007 (PST)

Not at all. As I said I've done this procedure in lecture Halls and Seminar rooms and I would just be there 3,4 minutes before the lecture (after I got used to the procedure) and get started right away. For starts since we are only talking like 4 meetings a year we can borrow the equipment for free and give it a try. I can help with that. --Yanni Chill 15:35, 2 January 2007 (PST)

There is a big gain. For one people learn to be more careful how they speak they tend to express more well structured thoughts, our meetings will be more orderly and transparent. We can make ourselves more accessible since people can actually get a feeling of how we operate just by visitng us on the WEB and then be more eager to come to our meetings which are public anyways.

Also we will avoid pitfalls of misquotations, ambiguous interpretations, misconstured messages etc etc. --Yanni Chill 15:35, 2 January 2007 (PST)

In short the effort is minimal. The benefit is great. We can try it for free for one year and see how it goes. As a matter of fact I think we should expand it all of our committee meetings, but we can start with Associates and the Board for starts...--Yanni Chill 15:35, 2 January 2007 (PST)

Assuming that a good quality recording of a meeting were available and even downloadable, who would actually bother to use it? The secretary might to clear up confusion for the minutes, but secretaries have produced minutes without the benifit of a recording so far. Folks who missed the meeting might listen, but if it were me, I'd scan & skip - it would have to have been a real humdinger of a meeting for me to sit through the whole 2 hours. I understand the last meeting had an some discussion about this topic of recording meetings; was anything said that's worth hearing from the horses mouth? I'd just as soon read a synopsis here. Feldman 08:11, 18 December 2006 (PST)

We cannot know who would be interested and who would not. I would be interested and I know many people would be. Also there is a historical value to having a record of our meetings and of course we avoid misquotations misunderstandings etc etc... It's worth trying to say the least. --Yanni Chill 15:35, 2 January 2007 (PST)

The effect of recording a meeting

What kind of policy could be enacted to see that the chilling of free speech in the meetings regarding elections and other confidential matters is not the result of such recording? Would this recording be turned off at those times? By whom, and how to verify?

Also, this policy can be expected to be used as an excuse for other, more complete recordings to be made by people with their own pocket recorders - how would this be prevented?

In addition, such a recording can be expected to eventually be used against certain Associates and committee members through incomplete publication - how would this be prevented? C-bee1 10:07, 11 January 2007 (PST)