Thrifty Tech: Upgrading Your Tech Without Breaking The Bank

JERRY WEINSTEIN, CHIEF TECH NERD, CONGREGATION SHEMA YISRAEL

Principles For Tech

• The 11^th Commandment – Wholesale Never Retail, look for deals for software and hardware. Facebook Marketplace, Open-Box Best Buy, Certified Refurbished Amazon, Tax Exemption with Amazon, Best Buy, Sweetwater, etc.
• Authenticity > Polish
• Keep It Simple and Scale Up
• Good Audio is even more important than Good Video
• Everything is Time Vs. Money. Money well spent can lower time. More time can save you money. VALUE YOURS AND OTHERS TIME APPROPRIATELY

Stuff Everyone Should Know

For The Love Of Your Ministries, Use A Password Manager

• Password managers stop you from having to remember all your passwords
• If you are using 1-3 passwords for everything you are opening yourself to attacks
• Good password managers, iCloud Keychain, Bitwarden (one I use), KeePass (not on the cloud, more secure/but more potential issues)
• Have one master Pass PHRASE, WhatisaHebrewChristian? is more secure than A654&v4!, length = complexity

For The Love Of Your Ministries, BACKUP YOUR STUFF!

• Best practices is having a local, physical backup and a Cloud backup.
• For Local backup buy the appropriate Flashdrives/External Harddrives
• For Cloud Backup Just Get Backblaze for $99 a year. Backs up everything on a computer with no limits. Can access files remotely, and will backup flash drives as long as you connect them for a bit once every 30 days.

Remote Desktop Tools

• Remote Desktop tools allow you access remote computers. This allows people who are not physically present control/help you
• Anydesk is what I use, free for non-commercial use
• Teamviewer is another popular alternative
• NoMachine/Rust Open Source but requires more work

TechSoup – Cheapest Way For the Good Stuff

• Many major tech companies offer discounts through TechSoup
• Office 365 $3 a month per user (can be installed on multiple computers)
• Adobe Creative Cloud, Quickbooks, Computers, tons of other stuff
• Only Available for registered Nonprofits, If you do a Form 990 and areon the IRS site you probably qualify!

Text & Audio

OCR – Optical Character Recognition

• OCR is a technology that turns pictures of text into editable text.
• https://www.ilovepdf.com/
• https://www.naps2.com/
• Google Drive – Upload file, right-click open in Google Docs
• Evernote, especially for handwriting

Transcribing Audio

• Whisper AI, is new tech, Google “Whisper Standalone”
• Adobe Premiere’s transcribe feature
• Word has a built-in Transcribe Feature, both on Desktop and on Web

Audio Recording

• Audacity is the king for simple audio recording and editing
• Your recorder apps on your phone actually have some decent features
• Adobe Podcast AI is new and really good at enhancing audio, both in files like MP3, and in videos. If you have an Adobe Subscription you have access for free to the Premium features.
• Adobe Premier has great Audio cleanup

Web Stuff

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

• Way too much to talk about here. Udemy and Google have good information about it. Use the tools that your web service provides!
• Update Your Listings, Specifically Google My Business, get people to leave you honest reviews
• Google analytics, but also Google Search Console, shows you what people search for to get to your website

Social Media

• Use your analytic tools built into services
• If you post to multiple services use a scheduling tool like Metricool, Buffer, or Oneup
• If you are just on Facebook/Instagram use their scheduling tools
• Creating content? Any Content? Even Some Video? Canva (free for Registred Nonprofits) or Adobe Express

Video & Livestreaming

Video Editing Tools

• Adobe Premier is my goto
• Davinci Resolve is free and very popular
• Shotcut – Free and Simpler
• Apple iMovie

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OBS – Open Broadcasting Software

• OBS is the go-to free streaming software
• Can do pretty much anything
• Can bring in multiple videos, audio, pictures, powerpoints, online videos, screens, webcams, can output as a virtual webcam or stream to multiple websites, while also recording the video

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Equipment

The Essentials

• USB-C/Thunderbolt Hub
• Big Flash drives! >16 GB
• The Adapters You Need For Your PC/Tablet/Phone

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Audio

• Samson Technologies Q2U USB/XLR Dynamic for a Mic $60
• Any microphone arm $15-35
• Tascom DR-05X Record audio with a cheap lapel mic or built-in mic $80
• Behringer Xenyx Mixer with Usb Output
• Focusrite Scarlett or Behringer U-Phoria to move XLR/Stereo Ouput to USB
• Hollyland Lark M2 Wireless Lavalier – Best combo Wireless system $160

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Video Equipment

• Your phone, a decent old phone, a decent webcam for up close video
• Optical Zoom always NEVER Digital Zoom
• Some very fancy phones have a telephoto lens with optical zoom!
• If you are doing anything at a distance more than a couple feet you need a dedicated camera.

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Video Equipment Continued

• Mirrorless Vlogging Cameras Canon EOS, Mirrorless cameras like Panasonic G7, Sony
• Need the right lens for the job, requires research. Also get a dummy battery to hook up to power
• Hook audio into camera if you can or record separately and sync later (adobe premier audio sync is amazing)
• Be aware of Audio/Video Desync
• Need a video capture card for some cameras to hook them to computer. Elgato Camlink is the standard, Chinese ones are mixed bag but some are good!

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Video Tips

• Lighting matters! You can buy lighting setups to get fancy. Get a light for your desk, etc.
• Output to 1080p for most things.
• Record in 4k if you need some zoom. Allows you to crop and zoom in without picture loss!
• Remember tons of people watch on phone and might not be able to see or read content taking up a tiny portion of the screen.

Livestreaming

• OBS is your friend! Even if you just stream to Zoom you can use it as a virtual webcam and use that on Zoom, Skype etc.
• Facebook and Youtube are the biggest places. OBS multiple streaming plugin allows you to do both at the same time.
• If you are doing livestreaming interviews with just two people. (You + Other) use Skype with NDI turned on and the NDI plugin for OBS
• Livestreaming interviews with multiple people VdO.ninja
• Vdo.Ninja is amazing in general

PTZ Cameras

• For permanent installation of cameras in a place for streaming such as a Church or Synogogue you probably want PTZ cameras
• PTZ cameras are remote controlled (software or physical hardware) and can move around and zoom
• PTZ Optics is recommended

AI

• AI or Artificial Intelligence is overhyped and technically does not exist
• Tech companies and everyone who supports them are overhyping for venture capital funding
• See “self-driving” cars and the lawsuits from crashes, Metaverse, Decentralized Currency (Sorry Murray)
• AI may not exist now but LLM (Large-Language Models) do!

LLM

• LLM’s are terrible at creating new things. They “hallucinate” a cutesy term to describe the programs outputting literally false information
• LLM’s are good at mimicking the data they have been trained on. If they have been trained on Picasso it may be able to mimic Picaso’s style with Darth Vader
• LLM’s are also good at modifying existing content and querying/summarizing/restating existing words
• LLMs are for written words and images what Excel is for Data

The Three Big LLMs

• Chat GPT, Claude 3, Gemini
• Each of these models are constantly being updated with paid users for the first two having access to the best models.
• Can be used in a variety of ways but become more powerful with “prompts”. The more specific you are in your prompt or task the better the results.

Other AI Tools

• Literally every day new AI tools are being released or updated
• We see integration of “AI” with existing tools such as Adobe, Canva, Office, etc. These tools will probably be the most useful for most people in helping with existing use.

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