North Coast Connections

The basic road-tech survival package consists of laptops, cell phones, PDAs (or smart phones or other organizers that help you to track tasks and time), digital storage, cords/cables (or wirless connectivity), bags (or carry-ons), and "luxury" add ons such as portable printers, portable scanners, wireless mouse and other gadgets.

Their tips and tricks seem sensible:

♦ If it has password protection or encryption, use it.

♦ If your tech tools require access (such as cell and smart phones), check to ensure you have coverage in your remote location.

♦ Check ahead of time to see if your hotel has WiFi or wired high speed connectivity.

♦ If you're not bringing your printer, plan your printing options.

♦ If you're not familiar with the area and need to be mobile, get maps or consider a GPS unit.

♦ Be careful when connecting to the Internet in public areas (you never know who's snooping on you).

♦ Develop back-up plans for likely trouble (power outages, lost data, hardware crashes).

Probably the most important question to ask is what data you will need while you're on the road. If you'll need all your desktop files, will you bring them with you on a thumb drive or pre-load them onto your laptop? If so, you'd better password protect or encrypt the files (or both). If you plan to use a "virtual office" access to your home or office computer, check your network access ahead of time and make sure your home/office server or desktop is on and accessible. Even if you work these issues out, ask what you will do if your system fails ... do you have a back-up plan? I use my Internet file back-up system as my back-up plan.

They end their presentation with personal travel tips ... stay hydrated, get plenty of rest and wash your hands a lot. I wonder if staying hydrated means to drink a sufficient amount of beer?

As a card carrying, road tested traveling tech warrior, I can attest first hand to the efficacy of the tips and tricks offered in this presentation. I've had just about every imaginable technology curve ball thrown at me, including fried power chords, laptops possessed by evil spirits, revolting software, thumb drive (and other data storage) failures, and lack of power conversion in foreign lands, just to name a few. The worst are presentation hardware and software failures on the threshold of a major presentation.

In order to survive, you should have back-up plans and ample resourcefulness to find workarounds. When traveling in the US, I've also become a huge fan of Kinko's, where computing, connectivity and printing options abound, often 7-days-a-week, 24-hours-a-day.

My 2008 calendar is already starting to fill with road trips and, luckily, I have an arsenal stocked full with short-stay and long-stay technology options.

May the new year bring you health, happiness and prosperity ... I will have to earn much of my prosperity by hunting it down using technology in faraway lands.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com