Community Transcripts Project ⚙ New Group ⚙ An Invitation ⚙ Day 6*

Let’s Build Community. 

I welcome you to participate in the new Daily Kos group, Community Transcripts Project. This group will create transcripts of important progressive speeches and interviews which would otherwise not be transcribed. Our purpose is to support many individuals and groups. We crowd-source funds to pay our skilled transcriptionists more than a living wage. 

Calling All Activists. 

We need robust and proactive online activists. We need people to find and recommend the best speeches of our best progressive communicators. If you hear a great speech by a local candidate, please let us know. If you are a down-level candidate or their supporter and need transcription, let us know. If you want to suggest a video or audio recording, please do.  If you want to donate, let us know.  If you want to promote our Community Transcripts Project in other groups, in open-thread Daily Kos stories (community bulletin boards), or in other Daily Kos stories, please do. Of course we also need all the usual Daily Kos spread-the-word activities of following, recommending, tipping, commenting, and broadcasting to social media. Who and what else do you think we need? What will you do? 

Who Will Benefit from Our Transcripts?

Transcripts support and empower many individuals and groups. For some, transcripts are a convenience. For others, transcripts are required. The following categories are not mutually exclusive. Many people will benefit from transcripts, including the following: 

• Down-ballot candidates.
• People with many types of temporary or permanent disabilities and impairments (hearing, vision, cognitive).
• Creators, bloggers, reporters, editors, producers, students, and scholars who will be able to easily incorporate quotes in their writings.
• People who access web content via limited cellular data plans or dial-up connections.
• People who cannot listen to recordings due to time constraints and pressing priorities.
• People with visual memories who learn better by reading than by watching or listening.
• People who cannot participate at all without transcripts. 
• People whose livelihood depends on transcripts. 
• People whose acoustic environment prohibits the playing of videos due to employment, a sleeping or sound-sensitive family member or roommate, and/or sound pollution.  
• Information seekers. Transcripts make video content accessible to search engines and automated web-archiving tools.
• People who do not speak or understand spoken English well and who depend on web translation to access information.
• Transcriptionists who are members of Daily Kos.

How Will Videos be Selected?

Anyone may suggest or nominate a recorded speech or interview for transcription. This can be done in comments, by kosmail, and/or by email. An advisory board will review selections and choose recordings to be transcribed. The information you provide in your nomination statement will help us determine if we will transcribe it.

How We Will Communicate

We will communicate with each other primarily by email, which is more efficient and effective than group kosmail and will not limit participation to members of Daily Kos. My email is 2thanks.dkos@gmail.com.

I plan to develop several mailing lists, including a list for group round-table discussions, a list for members of the advisory board, and a list to announce the posting of stories. We will announce further details later. 

If you send me your email address, you do not have to tell me your Daily Kos name. I will be meticulous and careful about sending notification emails as blind copies only. If you give me your email address, please tell me if I can share your email with everyone in the group, or if it is for me only.

How to Make a Suggestion 

If you make a suggestion, please do not just post a video or URL. For our records, future stories, and web findability, please type the following in your request:

• The name of the speaker(s). 
• The URL where the primary video is posted.
• The name of the organization which hosted the original website.
• The date of the original recording.
• The title of the video. 
• If the speaker is a candidate for office, please include the position, district, city, and state. 
• Most importantly, your reasons for nominating this recording.   

Who will transcribe? 

Most medical transcriptionists are female, and transcriptionists as a group are poorly compensated and often exploited by large multinational transcription corporations, which collect most of the profits and provide very low wages with few or no benefits. In addition, the introduction of computer-generated transcripts which need editing has resulted in fewer available positions, with a heavier workload, greater accuracy demands, and even less pay for those who remain employed in the industry. Our Community Transcripts Project may eventually need more transcriptionists. We will pay our transcriptionists more than a living wage. If you are a skilled transcriptionist, please let me know.

Crowdfunding and Expenses

As JoanMar’s grandmother used to say, “Many a mickle make a muckle.” For now, our goal will be to raise $300 for each one hour of transcribed video or audio recording. For every $300 raised, we will transcribe approximately one recorded hour. The standard industry-wide expectation is that it takes about 4 to 5 hours to transcribe 1 hour of recording. How long it actually takes to transcribe any recording of course depends on many variables. Because of technical issues with the insertion of time stamps, our community transcripts will take longer than the industry average. We will pay our skilled transcriptionists more than a living wage, commensurate with their skills, and we will never outsource our transcription. Most of our funds will flow to transcriptionists, and the rest will hopefully cover our administrative costs. To make a donation via PayPal, please use this email address: communitytranscriptsproject.dk@gmail.com. 

Your Daily Kos Inbox, Your Stream, Following

If you want Community Transcripts Project stories and/or transcripts to appear in your personal Daily Kos inbox (your Stream), click the heart icon here and/or here to follow us. For example, here is the Stream of Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the founder of Daily Kos. You could also bookmark our list of published Community Transcripts Project stories here and/or our list of published transcripts here. Incidentally, if you join a Daily Kos group, you do not automatically receive stories of that group in your Stream. Following is a completely separate function, and you must follow a group, author, or tag to view those stories in your Stream. 

About Me, 2thanks

I have worked as a certified medical transcriptionist, text editor, and programmer both as an employee and as a small business owner for over 20 years. In the process of increasing my own productivity, I taught myself geeky skills with which I have created custom productivity macros and apps for friends and colleagues to automate routine and repetitive tasks. A software product with my name on it sold internationally. I created a widget to automate the sending of individual kosmails and used the widget to send about 5000 individual kosmails on behalf of Community Quilts and Community Fundraisers. Since joining Daily Kos in 2011, I’ve participated in many groups as an administrator. My recent focus on community building has been with Support the Dream Defenders, who crowd-sourced the Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act here at Daily Kos and work to bring that legislation to reality.

As a 24/7 caregiver of my spouse, I may be unable to respond immediately to comments; at times I may need you to be patient with me. Although disabled, my wife has never received Social Security benefits. My hope is that the Community Transcripts Project will help to supplement the income from my at-home, part-time, mom-and-pop business.  

Questions, Suggestions 

About Today’s Poll 

(Same poll as yesterday, trying to get a sense of our community, please only vote once.) Unfortunately, we can only vote for one item in Daily Kos polls. Please consider all the possibilities before voting, and please let me know how you voted in a comment or by email, especially if you wanted to vote for more than one choice. Incidentally, if you are not a member of Daily Kos, you can join Daily Kos and comment immediately.