bioinformatics chat

The bioinformatics chat open mic

What is this?

This is an opportunity to promote your research (or any other message) on the podcast.

How does it work?

You record an audio clip and send it to me.

Once I have a few of these clips, I paste them together and release just like any other podcast episode.

What are the requirements?

There are two main rules:

  1. It must be relevant for the podcast audience.
  2. The audio quality must be decent.

For the duration, the rough guideline is 5–10 minutes, but it could be shorter or longer.

The subject doesn’t have to be bioinformatics per se—it could be in an adjacent area such as biology, statistics etc. Just be sure to include enough background so that people outside your field can understand it.

You can advertise something (e.g. an open position) as part of your message.

I envision that most submissions will be people talking about their work, but other types of messages could be appropriate too. If in doubt, contact me.

How do I record?

You record the clip yourself—at home/office/lab or in a studio if you can get one.

Be sure to introduce yourself at the beginning of your clip.

To get a good audio quality, you have to take care of two things: the environment and the microphone.

The environment needs to be quiet (no external noise) and have as little reverb (echo) as possible. Prefer a room with soft furniture and carpets. Putting some pillows and blankets in front of you (behind the microphone) also helps reduce the reverb.

As for the microphone, sometimes a built-in microphone in your smartphone or laptop can give decent results, but it’s much better to use a gaming headset or an external (e.g. USB) microphone if you have one (or ask your friends/colleagues if they do).

A few tips on using the microphone correctly:

If in doubt, record a short (20 seconds) audio sample and send it to me before you record your full clip. You can even record a few samples in different conditions/with different mics, and I’ll tell you which one works better.

Should I edit my clip before sending?

You don’t have to, but you may (if you know what you are doing).

If you do content edits, make sure they are not noticeable.

How do I send an audio clip/sample?

Never send audio files as e-mail attachments.

Instead, create a link using a cloud storage provider (such as Dropbox or Google Drive) and send it to roma+openmic@ro-che.info. You can also use WeTransfer, which doesn’t require creating an account.

The email body should contain the following things (which will be included in the show notes for the episode):

  1. Your name
  2. How to hyperlink your name (e.g. a personal website or a twitter profile)
  3. Some kind of title for your clip
  4. Any relevant links (to preprints, github repos etc.) If you want to link to a paywalled paper, please also provide a way for people without access to read it (an author’s link, a preprint etc.)