Episode: 4683
Title: Recording the hallway track
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4683/hpr4683.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:44 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4683, for 2026-07-15
Today's show is entitled, "Recording the hallway track"
The host is Ken Fallon and the duration is 00:21:16
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "Ken gives tips on how to record interviews at events"
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Falon, you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today is one that's kind of behind the curtains, here at HPR and it is response to
crystals, request for some recommendations about recording at events and stuff.
And as this is something that I've done on many, many occasions, I promised him that I
get back with some feedback as to what so HPR has been known for a long time for covering
the whole way of tracking events. So while the talks and presentations may be streamed,
we go around and interview and chat with the people who are the heart and soul of the events,
the stands, the people on the whole way, anybody who's doing interesting stuff that we can
talk about to give you a sense of what it was like to be a event. There's proven to be
very rewarding from a lot of people, a lot of people are appreciated. We're in a unique ability
because we have people all over the world. So even if you're going to the smallest of events,
you can actually develop a remote note here in HPR. And the ideal package would be that when
the call for presentations comes out, call for papers comes out, that we would contact the
organizer at that point. So several months before the events that people have an ideal of
what the event is about and you interview the hosts of the event. So where when who what why
that whole typical journalistic response to the event and then where it is and when it's on.
And then when you're posting the show notes to that given idea of how accessible it is
from a point of view of planes, trains and normal bills and what the facilities are, what the foods
are going to be, what the cost is. Is the wheelchair accessible? Are there going to be recordings?
What are the code of conduct? So that's the typical interview that you'll notice here. The most
recent one I did was with the Tito's team for that. Now if you're going to the event itself,
if you have a booth, that's a different thing we'll be talking about that today. But if you're going
to be recording interviews for HPR, you're on your own, you're walking around. There's
several things that I recommend that you get. And don't be embarrassed about this. It's
important that you have. First of all, is aligned with your with a print-off scene, your HPR
and your name. Nice big, nice clear. On the back, you can have a QR code for people that you
can pass it to, that they know who you are, because it's important that you're recognized as being
a, you know, once you journal this, but you know, you're covering the event for the purposes of
spreading the word for the event. So you're not just a regular bystander who's trying to get to the
to the booth. I also have business cards with me, which has got my own email address on it,
and things about HPR, which I'll pass to the people at the event. If it's a small event,
they more than likely will know who you are, because they've already seen the
promotions that we've been done. We have already done for the event prior to it. If they don't know who
you are, it actually doesn't matter either. It's just you hand them the business card. You say,
somebody available for an interview. And this is what I typically do at first time. So,
Boston's huge, there are lots of booths, 50, 60 booths, so you really need to be gone round,
if you want to cover it. Somewhere like T-Dose, there was maybe 10 booths, so, yeah, loads of time there.
What I bring when I go to the event, as I said, is the Langer, but my name,
I've actually got one of the badges recommended, and then the HPR stickers, a pen, and a small
notebook that you can fit into your pocket. And of course, a mobile phone, what a camera, so I
use open camera, so main recording device that I use, and some one that I'm using now,
is a Zoom H2. Probably go with a H1. It's cheaper and probably more better for recording interviews,
whereas this tends to be a bit too much. The original Zoom H2 that I had was was good. It was
tier simple. This one was a little bit more for band recordings and rehearsal recordings.
Whatever device you have, make sure you set the format to the best. So, WAV and Flack,
what they hate with the Zoom H2, you want to be careful to pick something that isn't like broadcast
studio, just something normal. And such a did format, I also ate six or one, you will thank me
for that later. My Zoom takes alkaline battery, so I need to make sure I have replacement batteries for
that. And it's got a micro USB cable, which most people don't have anymore, so I've got to have
one of those, make sure it's a Daisy cable, and not just a transfer cable. Now, on the microphone that you
use, and it's important to have set headsets, ideally noise canceling ones that have got a cable
connection to the recording device, in my case, it's the Zoom. And that's got a line out.
You don't want the line in, but you want the line out one, so that, as you're recording, you hear
back what you're saying. I had a pair of Sony headphones, and they used three and a half inch jack
on both sides. These bosons that I'm using now have got a two and a half inch of one and three and
are two and a half millimeter or one and two and a three and a half millimeter on the other,
so especially careful. If you can't have that, at least the set area, both so that you can hear
what's going to be happening when you're recording. So that's your main recording device,
then you should have at least one preferably two backup devices. I have used in the past two
sons of lips, one, which is permanently on my lapel, and the other, which I hand to the other person,
and I put on a really before flight, a little keyfob take, but the length of your hands,
nice and red, so that they don't walk off with your device, which has happened a more than
one location. And more recently, I've been actually pressing record on audio recorder on my Android phone,
and I just give them that and have them hold, that's actually also, there are more familiar people,
I'm more familiar with talking into a mobile phone, and mobile phones are surprisingly good at picking
up audio in a crowded room, because let's face if they have dedicated hardware chips for that
purpose, because that's what they do. So that's it, that's what you need to bring.
Some of it, if you don't have HDR business cards, just print off a foreshasing
cut them off, a slip of paper, which your contact details is fine. But the land yard, yeah, you
can get them off supply shops, and it's no harm to do it. Don't feel embarrassed about it. You
are going there representing HDR, so it is just good. I'd say like a forestem, if there's a huge
booth, a forestem types of it, very, very busy, the huge booth, and you just walk up, and you've got
all these interviews to do, just make your way through the cloud, but your headphones on,
and recording, holding up the business card for HDR or the thing for HDR and go,
it's somebody available for an interview, and sometimes they'll go, oh yeah, well, you know,
call back then, and call back that, you don't have time for that. It's like, I like to be focused,
and just go, I have chosen you, you get to pick who's going to be interviewed. So it's either you,
or you did you dedicate it to somebody else, so they usually run away and grab somebody
and the person comes back and records. If it's a smaller venue, and it's going to be over two
days, don't worry overly about it, you know, they'll, they'll, they can get somebody, and then they'll
come back, they'll say, I, and you say, you can also tell them, look, I'll do my best to come back,
but I can't guarantee anything, so yeah, there you go. So that's it. I try, I get around the
pronunciation thing by having them introduce themselves, but let's get on to the interview itself.
Don't bother about going to a quiet place, or it just takes too much time, it's too distracting,
they will, if it's under stairwell, it's all echoey, you recorded in place, try and place them,
facing the loudest people so that you can pick them up and the crowd is behind you as the person
recording. If you, if they don't know who you are, you can, as you're setting the whole thing up,
you, you can say, HDR's Community Podcast, it really shows every week days,
Monday through Fridays, all their shows are submitted by HDR volunteers, all their shows are
released on to the creative comments, and all their offers released on to the flash, there's
over 400 contributors, and we specialize in doing the whole with track, just like this, where we
give people the sense of what's going on in the, thinking, are you okay with doing an interview? Yes,
I'm okay, if you just step out here, I'll place you there, if you can hold this, it's the back
up device, and then I will tell them, I'm recording with the zoom thing, which is very directional,
so I'll be pushing it into your mouth like this, so don't be afraid and don't shy away as I do that,
so I'm listening to the audio and recording it, don't panic, is that okay? Yeah, that's okay,
I'm not as I'm doing that, I'm putting the microphone into their mouth just as I would do,
because the zoom is very directional, which is good, good stone on the noise, and that's why
you won't have the headset on, so that you can get good recording, because if you're pointing
in the wrong way, all you're getting is crowd noise, so then you start recording, you hand them the
backup devices, hand them the phone ideally as well, and have that recording, and then you say,
you say to yourself, I'm at the Debian booth, taking one Debian, is usually everywhere or
I'm at the Debian booth, that's this event, and I'm talking to whoever young, and do you agree to
be recorded under a critic come and CC by a say, and if they say that's okay, and go and start now,
there's a bit of silence, I'm going to go hi everybody, I'm here at the Debian booth,
and I'm talking to, and then I'm trying to put the microphone in there, so tell me about
for those of us who don't know about Debian, tell us what Debian is, Debian is blah blah blah blah,
and who are you or what are you here? blah blah blah blah, I'm why did you come here?
what's the background? how did you get involved in the project? what is the most interesting
thing that you've seen today? have many years, you know, the usual stuff that we cover in the
interview, right? and go with the flow, sometimes it's fairly, you know, cooking dry, sometimes it's
more relaxed, you go around looking at stuff at the tables, but at the end of it, you go, well,
it was the wrong thing outside of the mist, no, thank you very much for doing the interview,
and enjoy the rest of the show, okay, and then you press stop on your main recording device,
then now you need to, there are now all hyper because they've been recording, but this is the most
important thing for the interviews as next is yet to come, and that is where you need to get their
contact information and get the photos of the booth and all that sort of stuff, so once you're
recorded, you take back the recording devices, and you make sure that they're saved, so
at the zoom is notorious for having a flashing red light, so you want to make sure that both
are recorded, or ideally all three, once you have those put in your pocket and you just say,
hold on one second, there are only four, I need to take a photo of you, so you take a photo of them,
and you say, then do you have a business card, some people will have that, will have other people
won't, you can just type it into the phone, as they're typing it into your phone, you
rice their name on a, on a thing, just say, Debian, and you put it on the notebook, and you have
them hold it up, and you take a photo of their pick face with the Debian note, so that later on,
you can associate that person with that interview at that time, yeah, this is incredibly important,
again, not so big a deal when you're at, as a small event, but if you got six years, 17 interviews,
all lined up, it becomes a huge race against time to get all the contact information in order,
and that's another thing, you should also request to a slot on the mailing list before the event,
so however long you think it's going to take you to do the editing of the stuff, then you should
record, you should add another day or two onto that, and then pick a date, so I would usually
try and get as soon as possible because you want to burn, you want to strike away while the
RN's hot, a lot of people are buzzing about the event, the hashtags are still active, so if it's
on a Friday and Saturday Sunday and you can get it out by Monday, well great, but that's a lot of
editing that you need to do to get it out on the Monday, so choose your Wednesdays more feasible to be honest,
in order to reserve a slot, you need to go to the mailing list, think that permission, usually
just say unless anybody objects, I want to reserve a slot for this, and we have fairly open
the one to be a good reason to reject it, to be honest with you, okay, and that also helps on the
day because you can say to the people this interview will be aired on this day, so you can listen
now for a bit, so one thing to give the whole thing some consistency, the first interview ideally
will be with the organizer, even if you don't actually record that first, that doesn't matter,
so the first interview should be with the organizer, and the last interview should be with an organizer,
if you can, or you know, one at the beginning or one at the end, whichever ideally one organizer at
the beginning and all the organizers at the end, you can also fake it, I don't like to do that
myself, you know, halfway through the second day, you can, or the first year, whatever you can
say, and the event was brilliant, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but you always run the risk that
something horrible has happened to look like a council, so don't attempt to fake that way, okay,
as I said, now you're in racing against time, interview should be posted as quick as possible
in order to, as I said, strike with the iron's heart, so the issue is, you've got all this audio,
uncompressed huge files, you need to transfer them to your computer and what has really helped me
lately, as been that ISO 8601 trick because at least all the recordings are more or less in the
same time slot, and you know, on the day your tube is getting recordings to be worried about
too much organization, so that helps, and then I run whisper on the whole thing, so that the audio
transcripts are working, and when I was in Tito's, I was actually having the whisper
transcriptions working as I was doing the interviews on the, from the first batch was being
been more done while I did the next batch, so then you want to do your show notes,
your whole thing put together with an introduction, the first one, the second one, the third one,
the fourth one, and then necessarily in the order that you recorded, whatever makes logical sense to you,
you want a picture of the person in front of the booth, that if there, some people don't want to
be photographed, some people do, pictures of the booth, if that's allowed, and contact information,
and that's very important, that you have contact information to the project, contact information
to the person themselves, or whatever they, you know, they may give you the interview, but they,
the tour people are notorious for this, they will only redirect you to the main project,
and they are person X and person Y, I'm respect that as well, don't take photos of people on
this, they've given you a permission to do so, oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, after you've
done the recording, and before you think them, just have, let them have a look at all the photos
that you've taken and go, are you okay with this, and if they don't like anyone,
delieces straight away because that way you don't have to deal with that crap, so
when you're uploading the photos to HPR, you can leave, you don't need to be huge high quality,
you can leave them as 800 by 600 or something like that, even HD, don't make them
any bigger than that, but you don't have to make the thumbnails, you just post them relatively
large, but not too large, because we automatically do the thumbnails as we're doing it,
if you can, and what I like to do is, you're not going to be able to do that because
because the timing will be wrong, but I like to have under each section a direct link to where
you can jump to the episode, so when the show is posted, what you can do is you can fast-forward
to where the episode is, and then whatever that time is, there's like an audio factory equals
whatever, and if you can send those to me, I can add the audio play audio now in the show notes
itself directly, so that when somebody goes to the landing page and they just want to listen to
that interview, they can press the button and they will play that interview, you can also
we will also put in hashtags, IDs for like hashtag debion, so that you can go to this episode
index.html, hashtag debion, and you wrote down directly to the debion interview,
you should contact all the people and give them their shortcut link to the episode and where
they're audio is playing, and we do not like to edit the audio, if we kind of want to just
particularly, if you're doing this, you know, very, very fast, where you're going to be having
you have a reserve slot, and you're going to be putting it out the next day, it's impossible to fix that,
we will, if there's a real good reason for doing it, but you as they interview or make sure that
there is not anything in there that's going to cause us to have to do that, yeah,
expect to have to fix contact information and stuff, so that's that's fairly normal,
the more the more entries you do, the more likely it is that we need to change a photo or
though I give you the link to my project side or to my personal page, but I need to use my
the project page or I give you my work email and I want blah, blah, blah, and that's fine,
we'll change all that because this is stuff that we do for the community, okay, that's pretty much
it's about all the interviews, sometimes you'll get interviews if we're doing a booth,
that's that's something else maybe for another day, what we do there, but hopefully that kind of
helps, maybe it doesn't, it all depends really on the event, but make sure you've got a back
up recording, that's that's the main one, and get good contact information from the people,
100 notes are a normal, it's fine just to identify the person, but have them type it into your phone
or something, or laptop or tablet or something, because it is, this is honestly spent more time
doing the editing of shows of these interview event things than have gone around doing the actual
recording, it's about like three to one, and it can be really awkward because somebody constantly
wants changes and my audio sounds funny and then you have to edit it on stuff so it can be awkward,
okay, but remember if you don't have a back up recording then it's very possible that you lose
the interview and I've had this in Boston where I've had interviews and have had to fall back to my
second back up device for many interviews because the first one was a didn't record just clearly
to record on my other back up stuff, I forgot to press record or something, and locally
was able to solve it just using, you know, audio phonic to be able to pick out the audio from the
background noise, okay, just as a by the by, we're in the middle of the summer here and in order
to the hemisphere, which means we don't have a lot of shows coming in, so we would appreciate it if you
want to record a show, you don't have to wait too long before it comes out, that's not to say
people don't download and listen to them because they do, they're in the middle of holidays,
so there's a lot of people listening to podcasts, so throw us in a few shows, that's great,
and tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
You have been listening to the Hacker Public Radio podcast, at hackerpublicradio.org.
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If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then visit the HPR site to find out how easy it really is.
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