Before anything else, THANK YOU ANDREW for taking time out while pakcing to move and everything to give me some advice. Subsequent interviews have been much better.

So I’ve been struggling lately trying to get things sorted out for doing remote video interviews. The person who inspired me, more than any, to start doing these interviews is Andrew Warner. Over at Mixergy.com, he does terrific interviews with people who are crafting lives of their own design, mostly entrepeneurs. If that sounds interesting, head over there and poke around. If it doesn’t sound interesting, start with the interviews of Derek Sivers, Premal Shah and Yossi Ginsburg. If you don’t find those interesting and inspiring, I don’t know what to say.

Anyway, Andrew not only has interesting guests, but he really has the interview thing down and so, struggling with my own efforts, I asked him if he would consent to a phone call to help me out. Despite being in between his honeymoon and his impending move to Argentina, he found time to talk to me and here are some tips he passed on.

  • Suggest a time in your initial email. This seems so obvious, but I’ve been wasting a lot of time getting consent and then going round about scheduling and waiting for replies. This way they can either say yes, no or suggest another time and that shortcuts the whole process.
  • Transcripts. Andrew has transcripts of his interviews on his site and I asked him how he produces them. He said he uses Mechanical Turk and offers people $2 per 5 minute segment they transcribe. He said he thinks a good summary would actually be as good or better than a transcipt. That was my gut feeling, which is good news for me. Having paid my bills for 20 years by putting words on a page, I find the prospect of writing a summary of an interview a lot less daunting than chopping it into segments and getting it transcribed. Anyway, I don’t feel like I’ve really digested a conversation until I retell to someone else or I write about it (thus the current summary).
  • I’m interested in interviewing skiers, ski instructors, ski mountaineering guides and folks like that. Not surprisingly, they’re not as techy as the web entrepeneurs that Andrew interviews, but I was stuck on the idea of Skype-to-Skype interviews or phone-to-phone interviews. He suggested just doing the interview over the phone via Skype, have audio only. Another solution that seemed so simple and obvious once Andrew said it.
  • For audio-only interviews, show a picture with a play button so it sort of looks like video and gives people something to look at. This was huge because I was tearing my hair out about the video aspect and I couldn’t figure out how to get my telephone to record. I hadn’t thought I could just call someone on their home telephone using Skype and just record it. And I get unlimited long distance for $3 per month!

  • Get a decent microphone. Andrew has tried mics up to $500. He recommended the Blue Snowball USB Mic, which I found at Amazon for just $69 ($139 list). It came two days later and the difference is huge — almost all the hum, hiss, buzz and other distortion dropped away. This is a huge improvement. $69 well spent. [update: the Blue Snowball came and I've recorded two calls with it. It's everything Andrew promised. HUGE jump in sound quality]

  • Get a backup. Another tip that’s so obvious when someone says it. I had been experimenting with Pamela for Skype, which lets you record audio and video calls, but was having trouble with it quitting [update: this was a known issue and is now fixed], so I was afraid to depend on it. Andrew runs his call recorder (I believe Ecamm Call Recorder, which is Mac only), plus he runs a screen capture program (Screenflow, again Mac Only), so he is actually recording twice and if the primary recorder fails, he is automatically doing a backup. As obvious as it is brilliant once you someone tells you. I haven’t settled on a screen capture program, but there are some good free ones for Windows:
    • NCH Software has a whole host of free tools (with upgrades to pro versions, but generally the free ones do what I need at this point). For screen capture, I’m using Debut Video Recorder. The also have good audio and video file format converters, audio editing software (similar to Audacity).
    • Camstudio is a Camtasia competitor. Camtasia is the category leader and costs several hundred dollars. Camstudio does everything I could want.
  • Webcams have lower quality than a real video camera, but allow you to see yourself. This is a good tip. I never realized how much I move around, look around close my eyes when I’m thinking, uhhhh rub my nose and eyes and lick my lips. I am not a TV presence and definitely won’t be the next Gary Vaynerchuk (another reason for me to like audio, even though I have a voice for print).

Maybe to people smarter than me, all of this seems obvious, but this advice cut through so many podcasting obstacles for me. It’s absolutely huge. Thanks Andrew!