The Tool Belt #8: Hacking PDFs for Camp, Part I

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📄 Hacking PDFs for Camp, Part I

In my experience, one of the things that creates the most work for directors is translating data between different formats.

Some formats make information easy to analyze or manipulate, and others make it near impossible.

PDFs are one of those formats that makes life hard. They’re usually not editable, and it’s hard to get information out of them.

For this reason, I hereby bestow upon PDFs the title of Worst Document Format for Camp Directors.

All joking aside, the nature of PDFs can make them hard to work with, especially in the summer when we’re all very busy.

Here’s a brief example of the challenges of PDFs and how you can begin to make them work for you:

At my camp, we started having campers write what we call “scanned letters” to their parents on a weekly basis - basically, paper forms in Campminder that we then scan in to a camper’s account using Campminder’s faxback system.

We print them from a PDF as a big batch, which is okay. The problem is that every camper has a sheet that’s specific to them, and their name is very small next to a barcode in the lower right corner.

We would tell counselors to make sure campers got the right sheet, but they’d always get mixed up. Our solution for a long time was to have someone in the office hand-write names and cabins on 500 letters. The worst!

But there was a secret hiding right under our noses: it’s possible to batch-edit PDFs.

Okay, yes - you have to be somewhat technical to do it. But the first step is knowing its possible.

As the resident software developer on staff, this task fell to me.

Let me tell you how I did it:

1. I ran a report in Campminder ordered by cabin and then last name (which is also how we sort the scanned letters).

2. For each letter, found the corresponding name (basically, match up letter #4 with name #4, etc.).

3. Print name and cabin on letter.

4. Print letters.

This script took maybe an hour to write and saves us 3-4 hours every week at camp during the summer. As you know, that’s precious time in season!

I don’t expect you to recreate this or to even to have known it was possible. That said - last week, I wrote about not accepting the limitations of your software. You shouldn’t accept the limits of file types either.

As I’ve mentioned, these problems are about your mindset. Does software work for us, or the other way around?

Let me know your thoughts, I write back. 😊

🔦 Tool Spotlight: Bowline HQ

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⛺️ Around the Campfire

This discussion on the ACA forum about creating a code of conduct for seasonal camp leadership:

🤣 The LOL Lodge

Until next time,

Peter “Head Counselor” Elbaum