Getting started as a host

This guide walks you from sign-up to your first analysed conversation - about fifteen minutes of setup, plus however long people spend talking. By the end you’ll have an account, a project with its portal set up, a QR code to put in front of people, and at least one conversation transcribed and summarised.

On the Free tier you get secure transcription and one hour of recording to try things out. Unlimited recording and the analysis features arrive on paid tiers - you don’t need them for this guide.

1. Sign up#

Go to the dashboard, create an account with your email and a password, and confirm your email. You’ll be the owner of whatever you create, so you can do everything in it. (Turn on two-factor later in account & security - recommended, not required.)

2. Create a project#

An onboarding wizard sets up the two containers everything lives in: a workspace (home for your projects, team, and billing) and your first project (the question or event you’re collecting around). The defaults are fine - name the workspace after your team, the project after the event. Three settings are worth getting right:

• Name - dashboard-only; participants never see it. Don’t overthink it; you can rename later.
• Context - describe the project as you would to a sincerely interested, curious friend: your goal, the sessions, the questions, anything unique. Include place names and common abbreviations. This sharpens everything downstream.
• Conversation language - set this to what people will actually speak. If a Dutch conversation is set to English, it gets transcribed as English. Pick the spoken language.

Creating a project has the full walkthrough.

3. Set up the portal#

The portal is the page people open - no account, no app - to record for you. Shape it in the portal editor. For a first run you only need:

• A welcome title and description so people know what they’re walking into, and a finish message for when they’re done.
• Key terms - names, jargon, and acronyms specific to your topic (without listing “dembrane” here, it gets misspelled in transcripts). Thirty seconds well spent.
• Whether to ask for a name and/or email, and whether to anonymise transcripts.

Use the live preview to walk it as a participant would, then move on. The fuller options - verification, Get Reply, notifications - can wait.

4. Share the QR or link#

Grab the QR code and invite link from the portal editor. Put the QR on a slide or printed sheet, or send the link in a message - anyone who scans or taps it lands straight in your portal, no sign-in. Collecting in person? The host guide PDF gives you a ready-to-print sheet with instructions and the code on it.

5. Collect#

People open the portal, do a quick mic test, and talk - the portal handles pausing, resuming, and uploading in the background. You can mix in other ways too: record yourself in the browser if you’re holding the conversation, upload transcripts you already have, or record on your phone with dembrane Go. See collecting conversations for which to use when.

6. Read what comes back#

Conversations appear in the dashboard as soon as they start; the transcript lands about 30 seconds to a minute later (audio is sent in 30-second pieces, and high-quality transcription takes a little extra processing). Open a conversation to read the transcript chunk by chunk, read or regenerate the summary, and add tags to group related conversations. The transcripts & conversations guide has the full workflow.

7. Make sense of it#

Once you have a few conversations, there are two ways to dig in:

• Ask - pick some conversations, start broad (“What are the main themes?”), then zoom in (“What concerns came up about X?”), then ask for the quotes. Best for comparing viewpoints and testing a hunch.
• Report - synthesises all conversations into a shareable document in a few minutes. Best for quickly capturing the atmosphere and main questions to send round (including people who couldn’t attend).

On a Changemaker workspace or above, the library also extracts topics, aspects, and quotes automatically.

Related#

• Creating a project - set up a real one properly.
• Collecting conversations - choose the right method for your session.
• Setting up the portal - every portal option, explained.
• Transcripts & conversations - the day-to-day of working with what you’ve gathered.
• Roles & permissions - what you can do as owner versus member.