Backing Up
From Stepping Up
| Leaving on a Jet Plane |
| Stepping Up Guide |
So, you're all packed and ready to go, right? Not quite... not until you have backups of all your work to bring to the fair. After all, who knows what could go wrong and you want to be prepared! Your project deserves it!
Print Backups
Traveling with your display board or sending it via courier both have risks because your display board is fragile. Although the chances of something happening to the display board are very small, if something does happen, the results may be drastic. For this case, it's important to always bring a paper backup of everything that's on your board.
A print backup may be an exact duplicate of everything that's on your board but packed in a safer way (for example, in a binder instead of on the actual board). If that's expensive or not possible for your situation (such as if you're making one poster of your display board), you can also bring another version of the board in case something goes wrong (such as the poster of your board divided into letter-sized pictures that you can use to reconstruct the display).
It's mostly likely not necessary to bring print backups of print materials, such as your reports and logs, since those would be traveling much safer. But in case something does go wrong, it's always best to have electronic backups of your entire project.
Electronic Backups
Electronic backups of your project are the written and data files as you originally created them. It's best to bring the electronic copies in a format that nearly any computer can read them, such as on CDs or USB memory keys. In fact, you should consider emailing some of the most important files to yourself so that you can access them from any computer with internet access. As well, remember to keep the format of the files general, such as PDF (Adobe Acrobat) or RTF (rich text format) files, so that the computers you have to work with at the fair can open them. You never want to run into a problem where you did your work on a Macintosh but you need to print it out on a PC. If you have graphics you want to backup, regardless of how you made them, save a copy as a JPEG - nearly everyone can print these now.
Electronic backups of your board are useful if you need to change any information last-minute, then you'll be able to re-print the files as if nothing was wrong in the first place. Electronic backups of your report and log book will help you make emergency copies in case something happens to the ones you bring to the fair (such as your luggage gets lost...). You might even want to scan or photograph your original log files in order to have backups of them.
When backing up, make your file names something that you can easily remember. If you're panicing because your board hasn't arrived, you're less likely to remember an obscure file name. So, for instance, if you're backing up your acknowledgement section from the board, call it "Acknowledgement for board" not "bdac".
There are always printers and computers around at the CWSF and ISEF for your use in case of emergency - all you need to do is be ready to use them.
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