Extending networks with podcasting in the Caribbean

For those members who can’t make it to the regular Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society meetings they can still follow the discussions by listening to the group’s podcasts, keeping them up to date with the latest technology stories in the Caribbean.

In the ten years of its existence the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society (TTCS) has grown from a small group of ‘techies’ to a collective of IT professionals, business people, students and basically anyone interested in computers. The society holds regular ‘tech-meetings’ where we discuss a specific topic, usually computer hardware or software demos. We also have more informal discussions where we eat pizza and chat about computer-related topics. We call those PizzaLimes. It is never possible for everyone to attend every meeting, they are either too busy or they live too far away. But our members still want to keep up-to-date with what goes on. We add notes on each meeting to our website but we still get emails from people saying they wished they could have been there to discuss a particular topic.

At one meeting the subject was podcasting because the former hosts of TechTV began their podcast "This Week In Tech" and locally, Georgia Popplewell started her "Caribbean Free Radio" podcasts. At our meeting, it was suggested that maybe we could produce our own podcasts, that way people could "virtually attend" the meetings and, more importantly, they could attend in their own time.

It seemed like a good solution. We could blend the topics discussed in our informal meetings and the tech-meetings into one recording and members who missed the meeting would at least be able to follow the general discussion. It can also be useful to the people who could attend regular meetings as the podcasts are always recorded later when current events may have changed or the story has developed in the time between the meetings and the recordings.

By providing an RSS feed for the podcasts on our website, our members living in remote or rural areas can still keep in touch by receiving automatic downloads whenever a new podcast is produced. It helps those who can't get to the meetings to get a sense of the topics that have been discussed. The motto, after all, of TTCS is “networking computer users”.

Inexpensive

When we began none of our members had any previous experience with podcasting so we had to learn fast. Help came from Georgia Popplewell, of Caribbean Free Radio, who showed us how the podcasts were put together. She introduced us to the basic process and gave us enough knowledge to get started. Perhaps the most important lesson we learned was that it doesn’t take a lot of expensive and ultra-modern equipment to produce a podcast. In fact, our early podcasts were produced using old analogue equipment, with microphones that were over 20-years-old and, when we wanted to be more mobile, we recorded onto audio cassette, using a professional quality Sony Walkman recorder.

These days the podcasts are usually recorded on a Saturday with four to six of us in one room. We use inexpensive PC headsets which allow us to hear the audio through the headphones and record with the attached microphone. This type of microphone helps to pick up the voice of softer-spoken contributors but leads to another problem. The headsets normally only work when connected to the soundcard of a PC from where they get their power. We wanted to connect our headsets directly to the mixing desk, meaning we would have to overcome the problem of supplying power to the headsets. Such separate power supplies are not commercially available so we custom-built our own.

This, along with an extra microphone pre-amplifier, added to the cost, but by putting the microphones through the mixing desk we have more control over the sound levels. Only the sound operator uses professional quality earphones to be able to adequately monitor the quality of the recordings. All of this is then connected up to the computer, in our case an Apple PowerBook G4, which is used for the actual recording and is probably the most expensive part of the set-up. (see diagram)

The software used for the recording is a commercial programme, called CD Spin Doctor 2. We originally used the free, open source programme, Audacity, on the Macintosh, but it had a few problems with recording. At some point we may revisit Audacity, but for now, CD Spin Doctor works fine. However, we still use Audacity for editing. The raw audio file created from a single recording is usually somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes which then has to be edited down to make the podcast more listener-friendly. We remove awkward pauses and instances where someone might repeat themselves at the beginning of a statement.

It is also important to check for comments that might be made innocently, but may lead to legal problems later. Those have to be edited out, or ‘bleeped’ out, depending on which fits the edit and flow of the conversation better. The ‘bleep’ was custom made, using an old sound effects programme called SoundMaker, shareware software that is available for a relatively low price.

To give the podcast a more professional sound, opening and closing music was composed with GarageBand a programme that came with the Apple PowerBook G4. That was very much a group effort, with several people pitching in ideas to modifying the timing and choice of instruments.

Once all that is done and we are happy with the final result, the file is compressed using iTunes. The file has to be as small as possible to make it available to people who have slow Internet connections, so we usually save it as a mono file with a low bit rate, giving us a final file size of between 8 and 15 megabytes.

Time consuming

Topics covered in our podcasts have included the launch of 3G mobile Internet services, the problems of copy-protected CD’s and the use of open source software. But there is a lot more to the podcasting process than we had originally thought, and it is much more tedious in reality than we had ever imagined. If you count all the pre-recording discussions where we decide which topics to discuss and the order in which to discuss them, add in the recording time and the editing time (roughly four to five hours to edit an average episode) it can take around 12 hours to produce a typical 60-90 minute podcast. We have continued to record podcasts but we all work long hours and simply have not had the time to edit them properly.

In future podcasts we will attempt to include people in the recording who can't physically make it to the recording site. When our resources permit, we hope to offer group members from rural communities the chance to contribute by providing a “call-in” service. Using Skype or similar technology, people in outlying areas will be able to contribute remotely to the recording.

On the whole, podcasting development in the Caribbean will depend heavily on the availability of Internet bandwidth which, in many cases here, is in the hands of a telecom monopoly. This is unfortunate, because podcasting is a great way of catering to people who the mainstream media do not consider because they might be in a small, niche market and not financially interesting.

For us, producing the podcasts has been both a learning experience and great fun. We have received appreciative comments from those unable to attend our meetings and opinions expressed on the podcasts are sometimes discussed at later meetings. In other words, podcasts have helped us to realize our goal of "networking computer users".

Mike Tikasingh and Dev Anand Teelucksingh are members of the TTCS.