what sort of programmes / equipment will I need?
A computer and a mic that doesn't make it sound like you're perpetually sat on a beach.
Ideally one would liase with the author (unless that's you, in which case, liase with yourself I guess), give them an idea of what you plan to do, make sure they're not going to hate you for ruining their masterpiece or something.
Read through the piece a couple of times, getting yourself familiar enough with it so you don't hesitate or get the intonation wrong (this might not be a problem for you, it is for me). If you're planning on any gaps for music or whatever, make sure you mark where to pause or stop the recording.
Then record it, obviously, making sure you'll have a good quiet environment (no dog-master interruptions, sold) for the time you need.
As to editing, if you don't want to mess around with the editing, there're probably other people you can talk into doing that for you. If you want to do it yourself, I'd reccommend the program Audacity if you're using windows/linux, I think OS X has some sound thing bundled with it. Make sure you're familiar with fading in/out, cutting, pasting, importing, and exporting to mp3.
Then get the file to me and I'll add it to the podcast app or whatever I'm going to do about that. Ideally the finished file(s) would be roughly 30 minutes to an hour in length, since any more than that might put people off, and less would be a bit short perhaps.
Ideally we'd build up a backlog, so if anyone feels like getting a bunch completed, that would reduce the pressure a bit. It goes without saying that, if someone has a longer piece they want to speak, that could be split into multiple 'episodes'.
In the future full-blown dramatisation might be fun, though one might want to get hold of a studio if they can do that, rather than do it via conference call ('cause, again, quality).
[Edit]Oh, and I'll start off the first journal entry tomorrow, I'll link to it when I have. Hopefully we'll build up a backlog for the journal too... not sure how we'd do that though, perhaps by putting backlogged entries private and then reposting them to keep the dates right or something, *shrug*[/edit]
