Are you a reporter or scopist who remembers, as Jim and I do, those good old days of yesteryear when it took manual steno machines, Dictaphones, typewriters, boxes of carbon paper, and lots of time and mileage to deliver transcripts to clients? Today, with realtime writing, computers, CAT software, the Internet, and files that zip from reporter to scopist, you can deliver your transcripts to your attorneys within hours, even if the reporter and the scopist are separated by thousands of miles. That's amazing progress.
The technologies that make remote scoping possible did not happen overnight, but the way that Jim and I began our remote scoping almost did. The action that launched our remote scoping research came shortly after my son loaded Windows95 on my computer. Anyone who has struggled with the conversion to Windows95 knows that there is a strong likelihood that something will go wrong. So it was in my case when I scrambled my registry. I called my son
yet another time to come over to my house to help me undo the mess. This time, however, after we installed Windows 95 again, he had me install pcAnywhere on my computer. The next time I had a problem and called him, he proceeded to fix my computer from his house. As he was clicking and moving my icons around on my computer remotely, I sat in amazement, watching and thinking about what he was actually doing and how I might
apply this technology to my work.
The next day I telephoned Jim Woitalla, a good friend and realtime reporter in Minnesota, and asked, "Jim, could I edit your work in Minnesota from my home in North Carolina on your computer?" And Jim replied, "Oh, sure." We both were very excited about the possibilities, and we proceeded to connect our modems and experiment. Our goal was to create a setup that would allow a court reporter to write realtime in the courtroom or deposition room while a scopist simultaneously edited the transcript via a modem from her/his location anywhere in the world.
Jim and I expected that, at the end of a working day, the realtime reporter would have a fully edited transcript to present to the attorneys. Jim and I are happy to report that we met our expectations. So when we were asked to do the Remote Scoping Seminar last year in Orlando, we were thrilled to share with everyone what we had discovered. We think other scopists and reporters can take advantage of remote scoping by using the information below:
EQUIPMENT FOR THE SCOPIST
Desktop or laptop computer
Dedicated telephone line/modem—28.8 modem or higher (56K preferred)
Remote control software (any one of the following):
Close-Up (tested in DOS and Windows 95)
pcAnywhere (tested in Windows 95)
LapLink
ReachOut
Carbon Copy
EQUIPMENT FOR THE REPORTER
Desktop or laptop computer
CAT system
Dedicated telephone line/modem—28.8 modem or higher (56K preferred)
Remote control software as mentioned above
Realtime cables connecting writer to computer
Note: Reporters that are outputting to attorneys' computers will need three available com ports: one for the steno machine, one for the modem, one for the attorneys.
