Organising – Preparatory Work
1. Take
permission from IT and other relevant departments for the infrastructure
requirement:
a. Meeting
rooms, with as little ambient noise as possible. These will be used as
recording rooms. If you are choosing adjacent meeting rooms, it makes sense to
leave one room empty between 2 recording rooms.
b. Each
meeting room needs a laptop / desktop with a working mic(internal or external
mic is fine)
. This computer must have “
Audacity”
installed. Audacity is freely downloadable from
www.sourceforge.net. Just search for
Audacity and download. After this, try to save a test file as mp3 format. The
system will prompt you to download a dll file by pressing a button. This button
takes you to the dll file download site. It is safe. Please download dll and
then save the file as mp3 once more. All Audacity computers should be able to save
mp3 formats.
c. Each
recording room will also need water bottles / glass for the recording
volunteer.
d. You
need to put up posters and also do some internal marketing to generate
awareness about the event.
e. Content:
If you are a school / college, please request your teachers to contribute their
papers / question banks for the Read Fest. They are an invaluable resource. If
you are a student, please record your notes for all subjects if they are not
already available in the catalog. If you are an office, record experiences of
your profession so that other people can take a more informed career decision.
The blind do not get career counselling or a chance to interact with
professionals in this way. You can also record interview facing tips.
f. All
computers must be usb enabled. The content, once done, will be taken by the
organiser in a pen drive.
g. If
any permission is required to send a pen drive / import a pen drive into
office, please take such permissions.
h. Arrange
for visitor management to be approved if you are expecting any visitors –
either from Esha or external for recording.
i.
All computers must also have unrestricted net
access to Wikipedia, blogs and all other sites.
j.
If the requirement is of sample question papers
and you have found some free ones offline, do save the link in favourites and
ask the site administrator for permission. It is not always possible to find it
last minute.
k. Load
the following documents on all machines:
i.
How to record for CLABIL (audacity user manual)
ii.
Read Fest FAQs
iii.
How to record (audio file)
l.
At some distance from the recording rooms, but
close enough to be able to see them, is a control center. You need 3 volunteers
are the control desk at all times. These volunteers will play the following
roles:
i.
Content management – what has been
recorded and what needs to be done yet. The content manager also does on the
spot cataloguing as the files get recorded, or makes the catalog at the end of
the read fest. But a record of what is being done by whom is kept by this person.
ii.
Queue management – who goes in in what
order, who has practiced what they are going to record, who is ready to go in,
how long is each one’s slot et al. The queue manager co-ordinates with the content
manager to give content to volunteers and with the meeting room manager to send
ppl when rooms get free.
iii.
Recording room management – This person
is responsible for managing which meeting room is empty, guiding the volunteers
to the meeting room, ensuring there is a glass of water there for them, then
giving them a tutorial on audacity, explaining :
1. How
to record
2. How
to pause and resume recording
3. How
to stop and listen back if they doubt correct recording.
4. How
to check recording.
5. How
to correct by deleting the wrong parts.
6. How
to start a new segment.
7. How
to save as mp3 file and at what location.
8. How
to name the file for easy cataloguing.
9. How
to check your voice recording and correct before starting the final recording.
When the volunteer finishes,
this person checks that the file has been saved correctly (mp3 format, naming
convention, location of file) and then asks the queue manager for the next
person who will come in.
All these 3 are full time roles with a lot of running
around and 3 volunteers are mandatory for the control desk. Otherwise no one
has a good experience.
2. Complete
the set up et al.
3. Circulate
a mail / communication asking for volunteers to pre register, with the Indian
language that they can record in. This will help you prepare content.
