Spolsky tips on travel, gear, phones and so on

Spolsky would be darned annoying if he weren't so generous. Entrepreneur, geek, knows everything ...

Fortunately, he's generous. Here he writes about lessons learned from a promotional tour for his software company - FogBugz. Many of them apply to routine travel (except the first class part). Emphases mine, alas I live in Saint Paul so I cannot escape Northwest.

Joel Spolsky's Travel Survival Guide - Business Travel - Software Demo'ing

1. We waited until September to start the tour. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September sees 15% fewer air passengers than August. That may seem like a small difference, but thanks to queuing theory, it's actually significant enough to eliminate most of the lines at airports.
   
   
2. We fly first class...
   
   
3. We scheduled most of the travel in the early afternoon, when airports are relatively quiet...
   
   
4. We never booked a flight until we were sure there was at least one later nonstop flight that would get us where we were going..
   
   
5. Oh, and we refused to fly Northwest Airlines (NYSE:NWA), which routinely schedules more flights than they have the ability to operate.

... we didn't have a single delay of more than an hour, and the longest line I waited in was about 10 minutes for security at Seattle airport.

...Here are a few of my tips for good demos:

• Ban PowerPoint...
• ...I try to watch video of myself to learn how to be a better presenter...
• It's OK to tell jokes...
  

...In my carryon luggage:

• My laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad X61s…
  
  
• To get on the Internet wherever I go, I have a Samsung Blackjack phone on AT&T ... supports GSM, so it works abroad, and HSDPA, for high-speed internet access... I wirelessly connect the laptop to the phone using Bluetooth and get high speed Internet access using my phone's unlimited data plan (this is called "tethering").
  
  
• The projector I use is the NEC NP60 (about $1250)...
  
  
• Because the laptop is usually too far away from the projector for a standard VGA cable, I carry these little gizmos called baluns which let me use a standard CAT-5 LAN cable instead of a VGA cable. I've found that a 25 foot LAN cable is plenty, but the baluns let you go much further if you need to.
  
  
• I also carry my own lavaliere microphones with transmitters and receivers (Sennheiser Evolution G2s) ...
  

As checked luggage:

• We had Lands' End Business Outfitters make us up a bunch of piquém polo shirts...
  
  
• We had our printer make up two big professional vertical banners with the FogBugz logo...

Shipped straight to each hotel via UPS ...

• 12-page 4-color brochures for each attendee
• Logo pads and pens for each attendee
• A couple of 25' extension cords, for the projector and the laptop
• A roll of duct tape to tape wires down on the carpet
• A couple of hundred "Hello, my name is…" stickers and sharpies so attendees can socialize before and after the event.

I didn't know you could do that with a Blackjack. Imagine if the iPhone were to support Bluetooth tethering...

There's a lot of advice in one place. I liked the "ship extension cords" -- obvious only in retrospect.

Thanks again Joel!