My Bag of Tricks

Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to observe and learn from some experienced folks who travel a lot to meet customers. Having heard lots of interesting anecdotes and having been in some interesting situations I have come up with a set of things I now carry whenever I travel, usually to meet customers. Or for the occasional photography trip.

Here's a picture of how I pack and carry my stuff usually. I have been a fan of Cocoon's Grid-It line for several years now ever since I saw a colleague use it. I also do occasionally use some cheap knock-offs (what you see on the right in the picture below) -- but nothing holds stuff together like Grid-It. So, let me itemize the stuff I carry.

1. Dual port charger: Never leave home without a dual-port 2A charger. Not shown in the picture but as a backup I have a dual-port 10,000 mAh power pack.
2. Micro-USB cables: I haven't gotten on the USB-C bandwagon yet. But yeah, you can never have enough micro-USB cables.
3. Video adapter: My Surface Pro 4 has a mini Displayport output and I usually end up connecting to an HDMI cable to project at a meeting. Occasionally also needed to connect to a VGA port. I bought a generic multi port adapter a couple of years ago from Amazon and that's been working really well. Something like this.
4. Laser pointer + "clicker": My most recent acquisition is combination laser pointer and remote presentation clicker. Red lasers are so old-fashioned, green lasers are cool and bright (and when no one is looking you can pretend you are a Jedi.)
5. USB flash drives: I often carry several flash drives. One of the flash drives always has a "Live CD" of a Linux distro on it which I can use in case of emergencies where a laptop or machine does not boot up. Other flash drives have my personal files and/or work presentations. One tip is to have some inexpensive drives with you that you can afford to leave behind with a colleague or a customer to share content. Needless to say, please keep your flash drives always formatted and clean.
6. USB 3.0 Hub and cable: The Surface Pro 4 comes with one USB 3.0 port and usually that's sufficient. I end up using the hub usually when I am taking backups of important presentations, or when I am editing images from a photo shoot where I want to make backups without having to plug drives in and out.
7. Wired earphones: These are for backup, when you forgot to charge your Bluetooth headset.
8. Card reader: I use this primarily when I am on a photo shoot, to transfer images from my camera. Other uses are to transfer images from my phone (microSD card) or to back up the data.
9. Bluetooth headset charger: I am on my third Plantronics Voyager Legend and I think it's the best headset ever. Except for the fact that it needs a specialized charging cable. I bought spare cables that I keep lying around in the car, at work, at home and in my bag.
10. Portable hard disk: Two drives: one for work related stuff) and one for personal stuff (music, pictures). As more and more stuff tends to get stored in the cloud I don't usually need to access them a lot but there are still situations where I am in places with slow internet speeds where a local copy would be very useful. And when you do need to take backups of your work you do need a place!
11. Obviously, necessary cables for the hard disk.
12. I bought a M2.SSD SATA hard disk and put it in a case I bought separately. Worked out much less expensive than buying a regular portable SSD. And it's so much smaller.

Not shown in the picture, but also in my bag, is a portable power pack that I mentioned earlier, spare battery for my phone (yeah, I have one of those rare Android phones with replaceable batteries and a stand alone battery charger). Also carry a set of AA/AAA batteries for the mouse and stylus. More recently, I have also started carrying a set of whiteboard markers with me.

I used to carry a Wallet Ninja earlier but then TSA started getting too interested in it and while it's never been confiscated, they always wanted to check it and that would cause delays so I stopped carrying it. I replaced it one of these and have never been stopped for it.

So what's in your bag?