Turning a live event into a podcast: A case study

Last week, I interviewed my former neighbor, Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, on stage. A sellout crowd of 1,000 people paid to see it, and many more told me they wished they’d been there. So I made arrangements to turn it into a podcast.

Photo: Alexa Rogals, Wednesday JournalOur hosts at Dominican University, which recorded the event, shared the audio with me. In broad outline, here’s what happened next:
I opened the audio in the free Audacity audio-editing software.I edited the audio lightly. The mics were too loud in a few instances, and they dropped out in a few other instances. Fortunately, I recorded the whole thing on an iPhone inconspicuously set on the small table between David and me, so I was able to patch the troubled spots with almost-as-good audio. (Can you hear the patches?)Once the edits were complete, I ran the whole file through Audacity’s Compressor function—raising the soft passages and lowering the loud spots.I wrote an intro and a close, and recorded them on an iPhone—being careful to isolate my voice by putting a blanket over my head.I edited those onto the event audio.I uploaded the completed audio to the free Archive.org website, whose goal is to “provide universal access to all knowledge.”I embedded the Archive.org audio player on ChicagoPublicSquare.com. (The player’s also embedded at the bottom of this page.)Then I shared the link widely on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.Do you have an event whose audio would make great listening? Let’s talk.