Techniques for efficiently and automatically activating portable devices include a device nomenclature schema used to associate devices with particular entities, including a person, a group of persons, a role, a location, a type, etc. A first device can be configured to activate one or more other devices according to assigned entity names when certain conditions occur. When a recording event occurs, metadata associated with one or more recording devices is stored, including entities that were activated during the recording event. A reviewer of the event recording can thereby easily determine other devices that might have stored data related to the event.