This week I am off to the Plymouth e-Learning Conference and I am packing my bag (or bags). It’s a couple of days and I will be away a couple of nights.
These are a few things that will be useful or make life easier.
6 way gang – instead of fighting people for the power sockets, you can immediately make five friends! Also useful when you are back in your hotel room and need to charge the laptop, the phone, the iPod, use the hairdryer, etc…
Coffee – I can’t stand instant coffee and that’s what you generally find in hotel rooms. So I take some of those Coffee Bags you can buy or Rombout Coffee filters. Of course if you drink that tea stuff then you can bring your own bags of what you like and are use to. I always pop out and buy fresh milk too!
If you believe everything you see on the BBC then you might also want to take your own cup, actually I have a mug, because I like a large cup of coffee and not a piddly little cup of tea!
Snacks – room service can be very expensive, so a few snacks or fruit now and again to meet those hunger pangs. Having said that, I know that Sainsburys is next to my hotel, so I can always pop in there for extra supplies, saves having to carry them down, but with other conferences this isn’t always possible.
Chargers – don’t forget your chargers, easy to forget and a nightmare when your phone or laptop runs out of juice. Or you can’t use it for the conference. I find that conference activity can be power heavy on my mobile devices.
Velcro fixings – For your poster and bring enough because someone you know will have forgotten to bring theirs.
Camera – to take the odd photo or two, I use mine to take photographs of really good posters so I can review them later at my leisure. Amazing how much detail a 7.2MP image can capture of a poster. I also use it to capture slides in presentations (ie URLS and e-mail addresses), I even use it to photograph flyers so I can carry less.
MiFi or 3G Dongle – I am sure that the WiFi at the conference venue will be fine, however what about at the hotel, the dinner, the train… I will be bringing my new MiFi which allows me to connect to the internet over 3G, wirelessly through a wifi connection. The MiFi acts as a wireless access point for up to five clients – will probably make four new friends as a result of bringing it to the conference.
Business Cards – always useful to swap, play cards with, pass ones you have received to others who you don’t want to contact you…
USB Cables – you never know when you are going to need one.
Spare batteries – for your MP3 recorder, etc… Due to the differing sizes of USB, normal, micro and mini, I now carry three of them!
Spare SD card – in case you lose yours.
Spare USB Stick – for moving files around, taking copies of presentations, etc…
Paracetamol – some of those presentations do give you headaches…
What are you going to pack?
Pretty much all of those. Wondered about a multiblock but not sure how you get it back when time to move on and someone’s got a dying need to keep charging for the next hour!
Paracetamol is very important – conferences and long nites always result in head aches
If you’re giving a talk/presentation then back up the back ups! My materials are on my laptop (always take my own so none of that codec nonsense occurs.. ‘which version are you using? ya de yayda), a memory stick (carried separately
in pocket in case bag stolen/lost), backed up to learning platform and failing that; a paper version incase I just have to stand there.
Always take my ipod (with movies and music) in event of delayed flights, trains and waits of any kind
Business cards still have their place in this digital world – they’re a great way of remembering who you spoke to and I usually scribble a note or two on other people’s so when I look at them later I can remember why I took it!
Cash!! – tis the law that cash machines will be 15 mins walk in the opposite direction to where you want to go 🙂
I have found with my six way gang that people are grateful for some charging time and are fine if you need to go. Some charge is better than no charge.
I also take my iPod with me.
Cash is a good one to add to the list.