From there the transcript goes to Gordon Taylor, another dedicated volunteer who edits and rewrites the transcript to produce a coherent, readable report for the membership.

Astute observers will note that I only mentioned the meeting presentations, and not the business portion of the meeting, which is transcribed by Crystal Friedrichs, a long-time member and volunteer. Crystal frequently edits and rewrites the transcript, too.

In both cases, I do the final edit, and sometimes another rewrite.

In my view the worst part of this whole cycle is transcribing the CD. To sit for hours with headphones on, starting and stopping a CD, relentlessly typing up what other people said, straining all the time to catch nuances of expression, seems to me to be both boring and exhausting.

I can only marvel at the dedication that drives someone to work like that, or like Terry Naleway, a professional transcriptionist who handled the tapes before Dennis volunteered. Both Terry and Dennis deserve the gratitude of the group.

However, I think they deserve more. I think it’s time to recognize that we can’t forever do this job with a volunteer who’s willing to do mind-twisting work.

One of the reasons I ran for vice president of SPCUG was to make some changes in the group that I felt would help it survive. As you know, the group has become considerably smaller than it once was, down to under 700 members from a peak of over 3,000.

With the decline has come a need to reconsider how tasks are performed. We recognized that the job of Sacra Blue editor was too large for one person to comfortably handle, so we broke it into two parts, and eliminated the printer, thereby reducing the amount of work even more. Now I handle the content, and Ken Hopkins handles the layout of the issue. We cross over into each other’s territory regularly, but we seem to work pretty well together.

The job of transcribing the meeting is, I think, the most monotonous work in the group, and the most susceptible to being computerized. Isn’t that what computers were designed for?

So, to circle back to my original point, I’m looking for a tool to handle the drudgery of transcribing.

My first thought (actually, it’s my only one so far) was to use some kind of speech-recognition software, and set up a CD player with the sound coming out of speakers and into a microphone positioned conveniently nearby.

Okay, so it’s not exactly a high-tech solution. In fact, it’s really pretty kludgy. I don’t even know if it would work.

I put out a message on the officers’ listserv a few days ago asking for advice, but no one’s been able to come up with any workable suggestions yet, except for Dennis Duffy, who is seeking more volunteer transcriptionists.

I really want a technical solution, though—something that does most of the work by computer.

Obviously there would be a lot of editing to do afterward. Sections might be unintelligible, words may be misunderstood, questions won’t be very clear, and the speakers of each section will need to be identified.

But it should still lessen the strain and the time considerably for the volunteers who handle this work.

Now the question is, do you know anything about this technology? Have you tried any voice-recognition programs? Do you have a copy of NaturallySpeaking or a similar program that we can use to test this process?

I know some members bought copies of NaturallySpeaking when the manufacturer was here a few years ago.

And, of course, WordPerfect has a version that incorporates NaturallySpeaking technology.

If you have any of these products and would be willing to help us out, or if you have any suggestions for other solutions to this problem, please give me a call at 916-488-1870, or e-mail me.

Some Changes at Sacra Blue
With this issue, there are some small adjustments to SB.

To begin with, I’m taking a vacation of indefinite length from writing my "Adventures in Computing" column. The time pressures of getting everything done on time are getting to me, and that’s the easiest thing to give up—although it’s the one I enjoy writing the most. That’s why I’m calling it a vacation, rather than a termination.

Also in this issue, there is no "Ken’s Kompendium," Ken Hopkins’ long-time column covering various computer topics. Ken, too, is feeling the pressure of real life (yes, we do have them) and can’t always put in the long hours we don’t want to get used to.

We have an article on broadband connections by a member of the Pasadena computer users group, and we may look for other articles from other sources to provide more information to you, the members. We’ve tried very hard to stick to content produced by our own members, with the exceptions of The Deals Guy and Ken Fermoyle’s column. We’ve dropped Fermoyle because we can’t get the column from him anymore for reasons unknown—he hasn’t responded to our e-mails. But we’ll carry The Deals Guy as long as he keeps writing. It’s a valuable resource for our members.