Slides

class: center, middle

## Through 9/11/22

---

### Summary

This first summary video here, I go over all of the things that happened in the first couple weeks since ministry launch. Even though we had a three-day weekend in here, I got really caught up in a forum conversation, and didn't perhaps make as much forward progress as I had initially thought I might. I also spent a lot of time researching various things relating to technology to hopefully make future video content better for this ministry. But, nonetheless, I did get a number of things done, especially in terms of organizing the YouTube channel more. 
---

#### Outline

- [Emailing back people who responded to ministry launch email](#4)
- [A debate on the forum about matters concerning submitting to government authority, and what exactly that means](#5)
- [Discussion about forum structure moving forward](#6)
- [Helping my good friend start setting up a ministry website of his own](#7)
- [Researching/buying technology of various forms, things that will help future content](#8)
- [Doing everything to be able to resume the SR4 video series, when the time is right](#9)
- [Planning out BB6A content grouping](#10)
- [Organizing the YouTube channel better](#11)
- [Asking a nearby school about parking policy and grounds use after-hours](#12)
- [Upcoming work](#13)

---

### Emailing back people who responded to ministry launch email

Thanks to all who took the time to reach out after launch. I got to have a couple conversations with people I hadn't talked to in a while, and it really made my day.

Even for everyone else who didn't reach out but still subscribed to the YouTube channel and signed up for the mailing list and such -- thanks for all your support too!

For anyone curious, from around ~75 people BCC'd on initial launch (many folks I've known from college and such), the ministry has gained about 5 YouTube subscribers, and about 6 people on the mailing list.

But hey, starting small is no big deal. I'm not doing it for fame or money, after all.

---

### A debate on the forum about matters concerning submitting to government authority, and what exactly that means

The timing wasn't the best considering I'd just launched, but a good friend and I had an extremely active debate going on on the forum for the span of a few days in this cycle. I spent a lot of my time outside of my 9-5 job there, including most of the three day weekend over labor day.

---

### A debate on the forum about matters concerning submitting to government authority, and what exactly that means

A brief outline:

- Initial WhatsApp conversation
- Compiling that into a PDF. (~50 pages)
- Compiling the conversation I'd had with my mentor about the same topics
- Starting related threads on the forum (referencing the above compilations)
- Lots of responding to the threads (both of them)
- Eventually, a voice chat to iron things out better, since there are some limitations to understanding tone and intent and such over text alone. Hurray for WhatsApp and VoIP. This helped more than much of the text we'd sent back-and-forth over the days.

At the end of it all, we had on the order of 70 responses across both threads, and well over 100 pages of conversation, I'm sure, were we to print it all out.

But it was good. A worthy use of time. (Although of course we've learned some things from the experience, and hope to communicate better in the future. At least I sure do).

---

### A debate on the forum about matters concerning submitting to government authority, and what exactly that means

Just another plug for anyone interested to sign up for the community (forum and WhatsApp group). The registration form is [here](https://www.bibledocs.org/community-overview/#the-form-itself) on the site.

If the scope of that conversation I just went over sounds super-intimidating, don't worry, that's just me and my friend in the section set off for us to go chat things out whenever we start getting technical.

Most of the forum isn't that over-the-top! I promise.

---

### Discussion about forum structure moving forward

I won't put everyone to sleep by spending much time here, but now that I formally launched, I had some necessary conversations with folks about exactly what that means for the forum I've been sysadmin-ing for several years, and what it will mean moving forward.

A couple of my close friends will probably get their own Bible teaching endeavors off the ground pretty soon too, and we needed to chat a bit to figure out what that means, regarding our community and how we interact there.

Specifically, we will all teach as we feel led by the Lord, and it is right and proper for us to be independent, but what happens when you put us all in the same place?

As I say, practical admin stuff.

---

### Helping my good friend start setting up a ministry website of his own

He'd already converted all of his content into markdown, but we spent a couple hours getting the local webserver and template/theme set up on his computer, so he can see what everything looks like as a website.

I had to rework some of the templating for him since he is laying his content out differently from me. Before we do things for real (actually deploy his site), I'll need to make my theme up on GitHub much more extensible (refactor to use SCSS variables for colors, for example), but that will come in time. Right now this was sort of the quick-and-dirty first pass, to get things scaffolded out for him in the meantime, so he can test everything.

---

### Researching/buying technology of various forms, things that will help future content

First of all, I ordered a new desktop computer to help smooth everything out in the workflow by means of lots more power (it should be here in a few days). This has been a long time in coming, since the Surface Pro tablet I've been using since mid-college is getting pretty long-in-the-tooth at this point.

I'd already been meaning to get a more powerful desktop computer to help with the video processing, but the straw that broke the camel's back here was realizing I'd need more computational power to optimally make use of voice recognition software in drafting video scripts, which is something I'll get to in a sec.

---

### Researching/buying technology of various forms, things that will help future content

Now, aside from juicing up my processing power in preparation for really ramping up the video production, I also spent a lot of time thinking about how to best create the video content itself.

While I thought I had a reasonably good idea of how I wanted to actually make the videos, the creation of the initial ministry overview video caused me to rethink some things.

Specifically, I decided:

1. Being tethered with a wired lapel mic is not cool. I'd like wireless, even if it's more expensive.
2. Being unable to directly read scripts when making videos will inherently lead to lower quality than being able to directly (naturally) read them with a teleprompter. It's a bigger deal than I'd realized.
3. Scripts for videos of any length are an awful lot longer than you might think -- thousands of words. If I wish to improve the video quality with formal scripts, I'm going to need to step up my game in the text-input department, a lot. Otherwise it simply takes way too long to write full scripts.

---

### Researching/buying technology of various forms, things that will help future content

So, in preparation to tackle these three areas, I did a bunch of research and settled on:

1. [A wireless GoPro-compatible mic from Rode](https://rode.com/en/microphones/wireless/wirelessgoii)
2. [A teleprompter setup that works with GoPros too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXZhksmmIYs)
3. [Voice recognition software](https://www.nuance.com/dragon/business-solutions/dragon-professional-individual.html) from a company called Nuance to start dictating transcripts at speeds hopefully exceeding 200 words per minute.

I haven't purchased these things yet, but probably will soon, after the new computer comes and I get it it set up. We are probably still a few weeks out from scaled-up video production, but I am building out the framework right now to be able to have a high throughput in the long-term. At least that is my hope.

---

### Doing everything to be able to resume the SR4 video series, when the time is right

I had a document mapping out all the remaining content in the section from the study I have yet to cover. But I couldn't find it!

So I spent a looong time looking for it, and finally found it. Then I verified it was in the right state (the last things I'd removed from it were the slides for the last presentation video I did). So I can now resume that series again right from where I left off, whenever I decide I am ready to pick back up in video production.

---

### Planning out BB6A content grouping

I watched all the way through what had been weeks 53, 54, and 55, where I had intentionally taught through all the points upfront before any discussion.

I also skimmed through the rest of the videos in the series. I decided that I wouldn't be doing any editing of them to focus them more. Not worth it, time-wise.

All of these will be split out into a separate playlist from the earlier videos in our BB6A playlist, as these are much more organized and focused, and will probably be much more useful to people overall.

---

### Organizing the YouTube channel better

SR4 series

- Organize already-existing full playlist for SR4 series
- Make no discussion video playlist for SR4 series

BB6A series

- Organize already-existing full playlist for BB6A series
- Make focused/organized playlist for BB6A series

Both

- Created custom thumbnails for each series, and added them to all the videos (around 115 videos total, at this point)
- Removed numbers from all the more-focused videos, to leave just video subjects in the titles, which is more natural.

---

### Asking a nearby school about parking policy and grounds use after-hours

Just as it sounds. Will be relevant for potentially improving the parking situation for the in-person side of Bible studies, eventually. Still no response, unfortunately.

---

### Upcoming work

One immediate focus will be finishing off the initial organization of already-existing content on the YouTube channel (the ~115 videos or so that are already there, about 60 of which are more organized and focused). In that vein, I'm planning on making a few more initial videos:

- Introduction videos for all the playlists
- A second channel intro video that is much, much shorter, with timestamped links to the full treatment. Since 45 minutes for an intro video is much longer than I'd initially wanted.

---

### Upcoming work

I will also start filling in all of the things for the existing content (timestamps, summaries, the content on the study webpages on the website itself), as I still have a lot of catching up to do.

Finally, I'm planning to keep researching all that I need to do to finish preparing for the video creation workflow. There's still lots to be done here (at least to get it up to my ever-increasing standards), but I am very hopeful the wait will be worth it, in terms of the quality the preparation should eventually yield.

<div class="footnotes">
<ol>

</ol>
</div>

---

#### Outline