We are only a couple of weeks away from TechEd Australia 2012 which means many of you are thinking about what you need to pack for the event. Sure you have to pack clothes and stuff for the event which I hope most of you can manage.  I tend to pack light and make sure I have room for the swag I always end up with at these events.  Two things I would recommend though is a good comfortable pair of shoes and a hoodie as it can get cool inside the convention centre regardless of how hot it might be outside.  But what about technology.  As geeks these days we travel with a lot of stuff.  Here is my list of things I’m packing into my laptop bag:

• Lenovo W510 with 32GB of RAM – this is my workhorse machine that I run Windows Server 2012 on and will use for some of my demo’s during my session at TechEd.  It has 2 hard drives.  A 240GB as the main OS drive and a 750GB Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive for virtual machines.  I have this setup as a Storage Space and have applied De-duplication on it so I can run lots of VM’s.
• Spare Seagate Momentus XT hard drive – 500GB capacity.  You never know..
• Samsung Series 7 Slate PC – Running Windows 8 and is the device I use when moving around.  Has 4GB of RAM, Core i5 Processor and 128Gb SSD.  It’s a great device to carry around as a Slate but is a fully functioning PC so I can do most everything I need on this while on the move.
• Nokia Lumia 800 – Windows Phone running Windows Phone 7.5.  Need it. Gotta have it!
• Plantronics Voyager PR UC – works great with Lync and my Windows Phone.  a must when at a big event and moving around a lot.
• Bose Quiet Comfort 15 headphones – These are a must if you travel at all and when I’m doing my final touches on my deck it’s great way to drown out the sound in the speaker lounge!
• Mice – no not the crawling type!  I take a Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, an Arc Touch Mouse and a Touch Mouse.  Good to have 1 for presenting and 2 others for general work.
• USB Keys – I have so many of these it’s not funny.  I’ll be taking 2 Kingston Data Traveller’s in 32GB capacity.  One is for Windows to Go and the other is for backing up data.  I also have various keys in 16GB and 32GB capacities.  I use 2 of them as bootable images in case I need to rebuild a machine while I’m travelling.  One has Windows Server 2012 on it and the other is for installing Windows 8.
• Cables and Power – make sure you have enough cables to charge all your stuff and it’s a good idea to take a power board with you so you can plug it in your hotel room and charge everything.  Most hotel rooms or apartments don’t tend to have all that much power to spare.
• Water Bottle – I always have my own water bottle.  Got to stay hydrated..
• A good Laptop bag to carry all this stuff.  I have a Booq Boa Nerve which fits my big laptop and my slate and all the other accessories.  Plus it’s pretty strong and takes a beating.

So that’s what I take.  What about our international speakers?  What do they bring along to the event?  After all they have much further to travel so they most likely have to think about it more.  This year we have 22 speakers coming from Microsoft in the US and I asked a couple of my colleagues to put together a video on what they plan on packing for the event. So over to David Tesar and Rick Claus to talk about what they are going to bring!  Take it away guys!

See you on the Gold Coast everyone!

Jeffa