Hi warmup,
Today feels transitional. About 8 months ago I opened an I Ching journal when I bemoaned all the stuck places in my life, condo project mired in broken communications and zero mutual deference, client project 1 skitting out of anyone's control, client project 2 seemingly impossible goal of wresting a deed from the cold grip of indifferent city politicians.
As of recently, within the past six weeks and picking up pace in the last two—new condo board with refreshed energy to move project through, client 1 convening a meeting with backers and this is gelling the group a bit;; client 2 is getting political "feelers" & comments that the city is closer to supporting us than we let on in the press (or that our supports express in their letters).
Now I have a grant to finish for client 2. Ay yi yi. But wait, technology might rescue me. (1) record client directly answering the grant questions. (2) transcribe file (3) continue to edit per usual.
Getting the raw text material is the bulkiest step of drafting formal writing like a grant. And moving from recording to text via transcription takes from 4 to 11 times the length of the recording. Thus 1 recorded hour may take 4 to 11 hours! I have an assistant and I have my own billing rates, and we're expensive.
Turns out that automatic transcription services have turned a corner on their accuracy. Several have free use for the first 1 or 2 hours of work. Others use humans, cost more, higher accuracy, and still can turn back work in less than a full day.
About 15% error rate is the industry average. One project worked with Mechanical Turk (Amazon gig marketplace) offering different rates to human transcribers, and no matter their offer the work averaged ± 15%.
So I'm going to do it. Pick two with free intro offers and compare! My own A/B testing.
Warmly,
Revu2