Pimp Your Work - Improving Your Work Day Efficiency

Work Pimps for working on the road

by Tris Hussey on November 20th, 2006

Rico on Contract Worker (a yet-to-be-officially-launched b5 biz channel blog) had a post this morning about working in a hotel (in his case because he was waiting for someone) and it got me to thinking about my own pimped-out travel routine. So here are my pimp tips for traveling and staying productive.

Let’s start with the basics.

Laptop bag.  It is worth it to buy a decent one.  I happen to get a free O’gio bag from Microsoft at a conference and it is my favourite bag so far.  Lots of pockets (including a great airline ticket pocket that I use for ferry schedules), great protection for my machine, nice balance for carrying.  Before this bag I used a padded sleeve designed for gamers to carry their consoles around and slid it into a bag I already had, that worked rather well, but I love the bag I have now.

Surge protection.  I travel on B.C. Ferries a lot and they do provide outlets on board, but with an ominous warning about power surges, solution? Portable surge protector.  I’ve used one outlet ones, but now I have an inline one that straps to my laptop’s power block.  It also has a network cable pass through to protect from surges through network cables.  This is a critical piece of my equipment.  I never trust the quality of power when I’m on the road.  Who knows how old the wiring is at a hotel or if the airport gets a lot of surges from big equipment.  Better to be safe than sorry, IMHO.

Now that you’re carrying your laptop comfortably and safely what about the other stuff.  Here’s the stuff I also make sure I pack:

• Charger for my phone
• USB cables (2) for my phone and camera.  The both use the same kind, but I like to have an extra.  One USB cable never leaves my bag
• Rechargeable batteries for my camera.  If I’m going for more than a day or two I toss my charger into a bag too (usually with my clothes).
• Ethernet cable (retractable) and coupler.  Sometimes you need to be able to jack into a network.  If feeling particularly geeky I’ll toss in a regular piece of cable too.
• USB flash drives.  I usually have an old 32 meg one and a couple others too.  You never know when you’ll need to transfer a file to someone.
• Pens, paper, and notebook.  Sometimes you just need to scribble something down.  Strange I know, but it happens.

Some extras I’ll pack if I remember or will be gone for a while: blank CDs and DVDs for large files, MP3 player, phone cord and coupler (I don’t pack this as much as I used to since my Berry serves as a modem in a pinch), extra SD cards for my camera (rarely packed since I have a 512 meg one in the camera).

In my car I have a charger for my phone and an inverter that plugs into the cigarette lighter and provides a normal power outlet (that has come in handy more times than I can count now).

Now that we have the gear, how about some tips.

Free WiFi rules.  I don’t like to, and rarely will, pay for WiFi at a hotel.  I’ll seek out a cafe or something.

Look for power outlets.  Don’t use your laptop battery if you don’t have to.  You might look a bit odd scouting for outlets, but it is worth it.  You can also seek out a business centre in the hotel.  Of course if you’re in your room, you should have plenty of outlets.  Unfortunately I’ve found a recent trend where the outlets are all filled or just not in convenient spots.

When in public, be courteous to others.  Just like working in a cafe, you need to be respectful of others when in public.

Speaking of being in public, let’s talk privacy.  3M has these privacy filters for laptop screens that look really interesting.  At about $70 for the widescreen version, I’ve been putting off getting one (though I’d love to try and review one … if any one at 3M or a retailer is listening).  What about WiFi?  This is something that isn’t a huge problem, yet, but I think it will be soon.

There have been lots of articles in the past about how your data and passwords are pretty open on public, unsecured WiFi hotspots.  This is totally true.  The thing is that securing a WiFi connection on your own hasn’t been too easy in the past.  Yes, a few people have been able to set up VPNs on their own.  Others pay for a VPN service.  I’ve been trying the Windows Live WiFi Center and while in beta it seems pretty good.  When I needed to work at a local library (no power at home) I flicked it on and secured the connection through the Microsoft free VPN service.  Why do I think WiFi security will become more of a problem than was a couple years ago?  Numbers.  There are so many people just jumping onto whatever hotspot is in range it isn’t going to be long before WiFi hijacking becomes more common.

So those are my basic work pimps for travel.  What have I missed that you’d suggest?

Tags: travel, business travel, work travel

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POSTED IN: General work pimps