I am often asked the question “What is Transcription?” when chatting to people about what I do and am often quite surprised when people don’t know. Put quite simply, transcription is the conversion of speech-to-text from video or more commonly digital audio recordings. However there are a lot of steps to go through to transform a digital audio file into a useable text document – and there are many reasons in business for needing an accurate record of events. Our clients upload their digital audio files via our secure online server, which...

In the lead up to the end of 2009 and in the first week of 2010 I’ve read a lot of blogs listing the writer’s goals for this year. I think this is great and I have a list of goals I’d like to achieve too, but I prefer to make my first blog for 2010 a retrospective look at what I decided were my must-have items from last year. Here I have decided to list everything that has made my business a success in 2009 and helped build it to the operation it has become. 1. Must-have networking group – The Australian Businesswomen’s Network (ABN) I joined...

Christmas is a time of giving, but it also a time for being with friends and looking back at the year that has gone before, celebrating what has been achieved. I intend to do just this when I attend the CCBiz Christmas Cocktail function at Ettalong Mantra on Friday night (November 27), both as an event sponsor, but also a member of the Central Coast’s own networking group. It has been a big year for The Transcription People, with our move from our home office into the HighPoint Building at Erina, as well as the business’s growth. We have big plans for...

Being a busy transcription business, we often receive around ten job enquiry emails per day either requesting information or submitting resumes for transcription work. Whilst this can be quite time consuming to review each email and resume, the process is often shortened by the occasional email that I don’t even waste my time reviewing. I have been shocked over the years at people’s lack of consideration and social etiquette with something as serious as asking for your employment. The following can deter me from even considering an application: Not...

I was inspired to write this blog post after attending FlyingSolo Live in Sydney recently. One of the best speakers on the day was Andrew Griffiths an Aussie who has done very well in business in Australia. His keynote speech at FlyingSolo Live talked about his personal and business journey and how he once trusted a business adviser who came his way during tough times who turned around his ailing business and promoted him into the A-League of small business entrepreneurs. One of the things that Andrew spoke about on the day which I could totally relate to...

On behalf of The Transcription People I would like to thank our amazing clients for their support and for nominating us in our local Express Advocate Business Achiever awards for 2009, we are finalists in the Business Services category. This award is run by one of our local area newspapers and recognises businesses located on the Central Coast in New South Wales. Our office is located in Erina, just outside Gosford, about 60 minutes drive North of Sydney. Although the majority of our clients are located outside of the Central Coast, they are located all...

When using a transcription service one thing you must check is the security of the file transfer mechanism used by that transcription service. The vast majority of audio we process at The Transcription People is confidential, this means that the audio our clients send to us must be sent to us across the internet securely, this means encrypting the audio from the sender all the way through to our servers. How do we encrypt audio and what should you look for when hiring a transcription service? There are a couple of common ways to transfer files across the...

Alex Popovic is one of the more famous Virtual Assistants based in Australia. She is well known for her blogging and more recently her celebrity status on Twitter. Alex has kindly written a guest post for The Transcription People blog … It often amuses me that even with free access to so much information via the net and media, those that have even heard of the term “Virtual Assistant” (VA) think of it as simply a “typist“. Whilst it is true most VAs do word processing, it is only one of the many diverse services available. So I thought...

I was recently invited to be a “guest blogger” by Alexandra Popovic from VIP Virtual Solutions, a fellow twitterer, regarding transcription typing. There were many things I could have written about regarding this topic however considering my fellow twitterer is an online virtual assistant and VA’s make up the majority of people that contact The Transcription People looking for transcription work, I thought documenting the difference between transcription and typing would be a very relevant topic. You can view the post on Alexandra’s...

I had a very surprising and disappointing experience today with an online contractor. Surprising, because it came out of nowhere and disappointing because the contractor decided to “vent” to my admin person who is a trainee and learning about not only my business, but business in general. The “venting” via MSN Messenger was so out of line and just plain rude that the only option I had was to block them. Given that they had decided to not work for us anyway, it didn’t seem that harsh to choose that course of action. But is it...