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Tub Organization

One of the most important aspects of ensuring that you can use Verbatim hassle-free is effective file organization. Much like having dozens of reams of paper without indexes or block titles thrown at random into a tub would make debating impossible, a single folder on your hard drive with 200 Word documents cryptically labeled “updates.docx” or “politics.docx” wouldn’t fare much better. There's an infinite number of ways to organize your files on the computer – but here’s a basic set of suggestions that have proven workable in practice.

Regardless of what organizational scheme you ultimately choose, it’s highly recommended that you store a master copy of your files somewhere in the cloud that is universally accessible and has a fail-proof backup.

Your digital tub will likely include at least these four basic areas.

  1. Current year files – this constitutes the main part of the digital tub. It could be sorted by subject (DA’s, CP’s, Aff’s, etc.), chronologically, or a hybrid of both. It would also likely include relevant backfiles from previous years that are highly likely to be used – such as impact files, theory cores, etc.

  2. Archived Backfiles – this is a separate folder, organized by year. Since each season gets a separate folder, it’s easy to keep a record of each topic.

  3. Private Tubs – this section would have a separate folder for each partnership on your team. It’s designed to be a place where each debater can put their own reorganized versions of files, highlighted copies of files, personal blocks, a completely revamped version of the main tub, or anything else they see fit to do with it. It’s also a place where they are encouraged to upload their Speech documents from each tournament, sorted by round, so that they have a record of each speech given over the course of a year.

  4. Personal – If you've decided on a cloud-based infrastructure for team file storage, it’s also a good idea to create a separate folder for each team member where they can store working assignments, lecture notes, judge feedback and the like. This would help ensure that in-progress work is never lost just because of one computer failure.