One of the rituals I’ve found myself developing before an extended trip has been to go through my “Road Warriors Kit” in a futile attempt to lean out and optimize the technology that I carry with me while traveling to some of our global locations.

With the fact that I will be traveling in the Asian-Pacific region for the next several weeks, I’ve found myself considering what technology I pack and carry with me in order to pursue my career and bring a measure of my personal life with me. It also has me wondering what other Technology Leaders consider the essentials that must go along when packing for the Road.

First off, it would be fair to state that I travel physically light and technology heavy. Physically light in the sense that I’ve never gone on any trip or to any location with more than a single maximum-sized carry-on bag and a 4-year old Sumdex back-pack. Technology heavy in the sense that after reviewing everything that I take along with me from an Information Technology standpoint, it would be safe to say that I don’t like leaving any of the tools I may think I need behind.

Why just a carry-on bag and a backpack? For starters, (and as anyone who travels regularly likely knows), the current state of the U.S. airline industry is appalling. Between an unrealistic (and probably unsustainable) pricing structure, overbooking of gates and runway slots at major airports, and the complete emasculation of most frequent-flyer programs, I simply do not trust the things that I need in order to function smoothly on a daily basis to be out of my sight. In addition, I like to be able to move fast, so when the inevitable BS occurs with flight delays/cancellations/gate changes and baggage nastiness, it is much easier to have a personal belongings collection that moves with me with minimal effort.

The wisdom of this travel attitude has proven itself to me on multiple occasions when fellow colleges of mine arrive at their destinations with part or all of their support-structure missing (i.e. their luggage had other plans).

Secondarily, I’m paranoid. Anything that carries data that I consider myself responsible for does not leave my person. Hence the backpack. My luggage bag can expand so if there is an occasion where I have a need to pack more than I had planned on a return leg (my Wife is very fond of small stuffed Bears for example) that bag can be checked. However I only do that on the return leg when the loss or delay of that bag will not inconvenience my trip. The backpack however never leaves my side.

However, I digress. The purpose of this post was to go over what Technology goes with me. So to begin:

• One Dell E6400 ATG notebook One of the most recent additions to my collection, this notebook replaced my Dell D630 ATG and as the love of my life (my Wife - just to be clear on that) would likely refer to it, my current mistress. While I’ve yet to own the perfect notebook, for me the Dell E6400 ATG comes very close. Equipped with a 64GB Solid State Drive and 8GB of RAM, it is a stylish and nearly bulletproof unit, easily able to handle the bumps, drops, kicks, and shoves that it will receive when stuffed in my backpack and dragged through airports, airplanes, hotels and offices over the next few years. My Dell setup also includes an additional battery pack that attaches to

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