Not very interesting work, (outsourcing services in data entry, document scanning and transcribing speech business) but work nonetheless... as you probably know, things are not the best here in Greece, unemployment is rampant.

If I am not boring you to death, heres how it goes: Transcribing a conversation takes about 3x to 4x the time of the original conversation (or so I am told). For this test project, we need to find out if we can get close to real time transcription. I got a potential customer that performs what they call qualitative market research. Basically an advertising agency comes up with a new TV commercial, screens the commercial to 6-8 individuals meeting some criteria and they all talk about it with a moderator leading them around. The ad agency guys usually watch the others behind two way mirrors, and usually stay for half an hour later than the "test subjects". They get the transcription 1-2 days later.

The conversation is usually relaxed, not auctioneer-like, they draw ideas on boards, they take breaks etc, so I think we can use their slow pace and breaks and periods of silence to our advantage as I described previously... and the ad guys can get their transcription right there. In order to discover if we can actually pull it off, we need to do a test run, but how can a typist be able to catch up to 8 individuals discussing? That's why I want a software like the one above.