Musings of a Marketing Maven

Con­fes­sion: after so many years of com­pos­ing on a key­board, I can no longer write or take notes quickly using a pen. Plus, my mem­ory for details isn’t what it used to be.

My job requires me to inter­view key stake­hold­ers or sub­ject mat­ter experts on top­ics that are impor­tant to my client, but often unfa­mil­iar to me before we launch into the con­ver­sa­tion. Which makes rely­ing on mem­ory even more dif­fi­cult when I lack the right men­tal model “to con­nect” and orga­nize new con­cepts, jar­gon or names heard dur­ing an interview.

The rea­son I’m doing the inter­views in the first place has some high-stakes objec­tive for my client, so it’s impor­tant that both my lis­ten­ing and recall be nuanced and accurate.

So the ques­tion is, what’s a smart cop­ing strat­egy when your con­sult­ing prac­tice requires you to inter­view lots of peo­ple, “remem­ber” the details of what they say, while remain­ing present in a con­ver­sa­tional but guid­ing style? And then syn­the­size later from the com­pi­la­tion of con­ver­sa­tions, while offer­ing fresh insights from an objec­tive but informed big-picture perspective?

For me the trick is to use a unob­tru­sive dig­i­tal voice recorder — one that can record what I hear through­out a day’s ses­sions — and then upload the inter­views to my PC or Mac that night.

Before I start record­ing, I ask per­mis­sion of the inter­vie­wee and explain how and why I’ll use the record­ing. (We resolve issues of attri­bu­tion, whether the boss will hear it, etc., etc.) Because the device is so incon­spic­u­ous, every­one for­gets it’s work­ing, so the con­ver­sa­tion becomes very nat­ural within moments.

My (Highly Sim­pli­fied) Requirements

Tech­ni­cally speak­ing, I have a few sim­ple requirements:

• Stor­age capac­ity, at what­ever audio fidelity I rou­tinely use, equal to at least 8 hours’ worth of interviews;
• USB con­nec­tiv­ity so I can upload to a PC or Mac;
• But­tons large enough to hit with­out hav­ing to pay close atten­tion to the device while in the mid­dle of a conversation;
• An LCD dis­play whose menu I can see and read;
• A durable case so the device can sur­vive being banged around in my lap­top car­ry­ing case or purse;
• Pro­fes­sional qual­ity record­ing and a sen­si­tive microphone;
• And native out­put in a for­mat that works with both Win­dows and Mac OS X.

What Works for Me

I’ve hap­pily used sev­eral dig­i­tal recorders from Olym­pus, start­ing with the clas­sic Olym­pus DM-20 (which is prob­a­bly no longer on the mar­ket). The DM-20 is a won­der­ful bal­ance of func­tion, form and small size — although its user inter­face (on screen) leaves a lot to be desired. Olym­pus has improved their on-screen UI with later models.

I can’t rec­om­mend the DS-30 because it failed the but­ton size and LCD test when I tried it. (It may be just fine for younger eyes and peo­ple with smaller fingers.)

My cur­rent work­horse recorder is the Olym­pus DS-50. It records in stereo with its built-in micro­phones, or in mono with most of the sep­a­rate (and more sen­si­tive mikes) that Olym­pus sells for other usage sit­u­a­tions (such as times when you need a noise can­cel­ing mike).

And yes, these devices can func­tion for music play­back, but I’d pre­fer to use an iPod (or my iPhone) for music appreciation.

What’s on My Wish List

Much as I love the use of record­ings to sup­ple­ment mem­ory, there are incon­ve­niences related to play­back for my usage situation:

• No Google-like search capa­bil­ity so you can eas­ily find remarks you remem­ber tak­ing place halfway through the interview;
• No highly accu­rate and auto­mated way to turn the recorded inter­view into a tran­script com­pat­i­ble with MS Word or the like;
• No easy way to set book­marks or point­ers with com­ments that you can return to later.

I’m sure there are edit­ing tools that would allow me to “cut and paste” snip­pets for play­back from within Pow­er­Point or Keynote (assum­ing I had the speaker’s per­mis­sion to do so). How­ever, those tools are not installed on my com­puter at this point.

Caveats

It goes with­out say­ing that there are lots of legal and eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions to explore before rely­ing upon record­ings for per­sonal mem­ory assists. If you adopt the prac­tice of using dig­i­tal voice recorders, be sure to explore the legal restric­tions and be clear and open with your inter­vie­wees about what you’re doing and why…

The rules will be even more spe­cific if you are record­ing peo­ple besides your­self for podcasts.