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Where Did I Put That Again?
- By Jay Delp
- Published 11/14/2007
- Technology in Ministry
- Unrated
Jay Delp
Jay Delp has been combining media and ministry for two decades. He’s currently writing, speaking, training, and providing video productions services full-time helping people in ministry use today’s technology to “Show and Tell” the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Find out more about Jay’s ministry at www.jaydelp.com.
Blessed are the digitally organized, for they shall retrieve their files.
Ever since we entered the information age, all manner of experts, social
commentators, and cultural pundits have been bemoaning the reality and
supposed consequences of “information overload.” Few, if any, argue that the “steady stream” metaphor (i.e., the sheer quantity and pace of data, text, audio, video, and communication that fl ows into our lives) could be
upgraded to the more accurate “gargantuan gusher” metaphor.
With the proliferation of downloadable video Web sites, Napster-like fi le
sharing programs, online music and movie sales by iTunes and dozens of
wannabes, free downloadable software programs and utilities, personalized
RRS feeds, the exploding blogosphere, audio and video podcasts, the incessant onslaught of incoming e-mails and their accompanying attachments — not to mention our ever-expanding library of self-generated Word documents, graphics, video footage, PDFs, digital document scans, Photoshop files, digital cameras and their resulting mega-pixel digital photos (plus those annoying “I don’t-usually-forward-emails-like-this-but-you-gottasee-this-one” e-mails from your so-called friends)— our computer hard drives are becoming virtual landscapes littered with debris, clutter, and chaos.
Whew!
For 95 percent of what gushes into our lives via the computer, our friendly
neighborhood delete key will do just fi ne, thank you. But what about the
Sometimes overwhelming task (or is it a full-time job?) of storing, organizing, and actually retrieving those myriad bits, bytes, graphics, and
gigs of data amassing on your once-spacious hard drive? Honestly, what are
the chances of you quickly fi nding that perfect photo, video clip, or illustration you downloaded six months ago “for such a youth talk as this”?
The following are some ideas for managing the most common types of digital data flooding our ministries and lives.
Photos
Obtain (and actually use) one of several commercially available (or free)
photo-management software solutions such as Adobe Photoshop Elements ($99) or Google “photo management software.” The killer app of these, uhh, apps is that you can assign several unique, searchable, user-defined “tags” to every digital photo. For example, that group shot of you with five of your students at their high school graduation could be initially filed in a folder named Graduation 2007, but the picture itself could be tagged with your name, the names of the five students, the name of the school, the date, and/or key words such as graduation, spring, etc. The idea being that once you have all your photos tagged (and continue adding tags to new photos), you can quickly and easily retrieve all the photos on your entire computer tagged with specific words you enter in a search. Sweet.
Music
As with photos, every song on your computer, assuming it has a “meaningful” file name (i.e., name of the song and not simply song1.mp3), is highly searchable (and therefore retrievable). But you must lay this foundation for easy retrieval by staying on top of naming and organizing new music as it’s acquired. For most of us, music is the data type we do the best at managing.
Video
An important complement to whatever file structure I use for organizing video clips on my computer is a topical index of video clips created in a Word document (or spreadsheet or database file). This index allows me to easily find all my video clips on any topic—family, peer pressure, media, dating, balding, and the rest of youth ministry’s usual-suspect list of topics. In this alphabetical topical video index I include the title of the clip, the DVD on which it’s recorded (all my DVDs are numbered), clip length, related Scriptures, and related topics. If the clip exists solely on my hard drive, I’ll list the computer on which it’s stored along with its exact file path (C:VIDEOS/SermonSpice/Resurrection Morning.wmv).
Presentations
This is where it’s absolutely crucial to file and store consistently, so think carefully before running off with the first “solution” that comes to mind. For example, each of my MediaShout (or EasyWorship or PowerPoint) presentations contain original elements that I or someone in our ministry
created with graphics, video clips, music, plus any number of song, lyric,
and Scripture backgrounds. So here’s the 64,000 megabyte question: Do you store all of these different types of media in a “project” folder for that
presentation—or do you store them in their respective folders by fi le type (i.e., all video clips in one folder, background graphics in another folder, music in yet another, etc.)?
Finally...
Whatever storage styles you’re considering, decide on a system and stick to
it. My own data downfalls have come when I gave in to the temptation to bend the rules in regard to how I manage specific forms of data on my computer. Not pretty. With the abundance of cheap and free photo management solutions combined with a bit of digital diligence on our part, there’s really no need to make the difficult decision to leave the 99 gigs of data in search of that one lost gig. Don’t let “I once was found but now am lost!” be your digital data’s lonely lament. And remember: If you can’t find it, you don’t have it.
commentators, and cultural pundits have been bemoaning the reality and
supposed consequences of “information overload.” Few, if any, argue that the “steady stream” metaphor (i.e., the sheer quantity and pace of data, text, audio, video, and communication that fl ows into our lives) could be
upgraded to the more accurate “gargantuan gusher” metaphor.
With the proliferation of downloadable video Web sites, Napster-like fi le
sharing programs, online music and movie sales by iTunes and dozens of
wannabes, free downloadable software programs and utilities, personalized
RRS feeds, the exploding blogosphere, audio and video podcasts, the incessant onslaught of incoming e-mails and their accompanying attachments — not to mention our ever-expanding library of self-generated Word documents, graphics, video footage, PDFs, digital document scans, Photoshop files, digital cameras and their resulting mega-pixel digital photos (plus those annoying “I don’t-usually-forward-emails-like-this-but-you-gottasee-this-one” e-mails from your so-called friends)— our computer hard drives are becoming virtual landscapes littered with debris, clutter, and chaos.
Whew!
For 95 percent of what gushes into our lives via the computer, our friendly
neighborhood delete key will do just fi ne, thank you. But what about the
Sometimes overwhelming task (or is it a full-time job?) of storing, organizing, and actually retrieving those myriad bits, bytes, graphics, and
gigs of data amassing on your once-spacious hard drive? Honestly, what are
the chances of you quickly fi nding that perfect photo, video clip, or illustration you downloaded six months ago “for such a youth talk as this”?
The following are some ideas for managing the most common types of digital data flooding our ministries and lives.
Photos
Obtain (and actually use) one of several commercially available (or free)
photo-management software solutions such as Adobe Photoshop Elements ($99) or Google “photo management software.” The killer app of these, uhh, apps is that you can assign several unique, searchable, user-defined “tags” to every digital photo. For example, that group shot of you with five of your students at their high school graduation could be initially filed in a folder named Graduation 2007, but the picture itself could be tagged with your name, the names of the five students, the name of the school, the date, and/or key words such as graduation, spring, etc. The idea being that once you have all your photos tagged (and continue adding tags to new photos), you can quickly and easily retrieve all the photos on your entire computer tagged with specific words you enter in a search. Sweet.
Music
As with photos, every song on your computer, assuming it has a “meaningful” file name (i.e., name of the song and not simply song1.mp3), is highly searchable (and therefore retrievable). But you must lay this foundation for easy retrieval by staying on top of naming and organizing new music as it’s acquired. For most of us, music is the data type we do the best at managing.
Video
An important complement to whatever file structure I use for organizing video clips on my computer is a topical index of video clips created in a Word document (or spreadsheet or database file). This index allows me to easily find all my video clips on any topic—family, peer pressure, media, dating, balding, and the rest of youth ministry’s usual-suspect list of topics. In this alphabetical topical video index I include the title of the clip, the DVD on which it’s recorded (all my DVDs are numbered), clip length, related Scriptures, and related topics. If the clip exists solely on my hard drive, I’ll list the computer on which it’s stored along with its exact file path (C:VIDEOS/SermonSpice/Resurrection Morning.wmv).
Presentations
This is where it’s absolutely crucial to file and store consistently, so think carefully before running off with the first “solution” that comes to mind. For example, each of my MediaShout (or EasyWorship or PowerPoint) presentations contain original elements that I or someone in our ministry
created with graphics, video clips, music, plus any number of song, lyric,
and Scripture backgrounds. So here’s the 64,000 megabyte question: Do you store all of these different types of media in a “project” folder for that
presentation—or do you store them in their respective folders by fi le type (i.e., all video clips in one folder, background graphics in another folder, music in yet another, etc.)?
Finally...
Whatever storage styles you’re considering, decide on a system and stick to
it. My own data downfalls have come when I gave in to the temptation to bend the rules in regard to how I manage specific forms of data on my computer. Not pretty. With the abundance of cheap and free photo management solutions combined with a bit of digital diligence on our part, there’s really no need to make the difficult decision to leave the 99 gigs of data in search of that one lost gig. Don’t let “I once was found but now am lost!” be your digital data’s lonely lament. And remember: If you can’t find it, you don’t have it.
