Steve’s Tech Journal

Section 1.0 Overview

Our family decided spend 9 weeks this summer travelling around Europe.   Since I was unable to take 9 weeks off cold turkey,  this was to be a summer working in Europe for me and partly for my wife, not a summer off, so we need to be able to communicate easily and work effectively from just about anywhere.    Our destinations included Greece, Budapest, Paris, then picking up a car in Lisbon and driving through Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Croatia.

Section 2.0 Technology and Communication Requirements

Section 2.1 Email

Americans my age still live and breathe email as a primary communication mechanism, especially for technical projects.   So above all else, I needed good email connectivity, everywhere, all the time.   I also periodically would need to download and upload large documents and read them easily.     My wife was also running a few projects and on a board committee or two, and although less urgent she needed frequent access.

Our children also use email and IM as a way to keep up with friends.    People from our town pretty much clear out during the summer, so the girls didn’t need to check email daily but every once and while they wanted to be able to send pictures to friends and see how their vacations were going.

Section 2.2 Phone Calls

Already before leaving I had 4 significant conference calls planned, two for 4 hours, two for 2 hours.   And I was the chairperson for these calls.   So this means I would need to arrange good quality inexpensive calls to the US, esp. from wherever we have broadband but occasionally also via mobile.

In addition to calls back to the states, we knew we would need to be able to make mobile calls in multiple countries, to hotels, to cabs, to friends.

And, as a family of 4 we might split up at times, and need to be able to call each other.

Section 2.3 Pictures and Video

Part of the fun for friends and colleagues back home is when you can send them a few pictures.   So we needed the ability to take some good photos and be able to record some video clips, as well as send these to friends and work colleagues.

Section 2.4 Fun

We’ll have a fair bit of travel time and down time, and it would be good to have some diversions — things to read, things to watch or play with.

Section 2.5 Backup

It would be great to be able to backup files and photos, so that if something happens to our laptops we don’t lose our data, email, documents, and pictures.

Section 3  Size and Weight Constraints

We travelled with one carry-on size luggage each, plus my briefcase, so we have limited space for managing devices, power cords, and technology.   We wanted also to be free to wander a new city without carry backpacks or large format cameras marking ourselves as obvious tourists.

END DOC

OK, so I didn’t really write a requirements document for the trip, I just did it now for your amusement.  I’m a geek, but not that much of a geek.  Here’s a pic of the four of us, with all of our luggage, at the departure terminal at Logan airport on June 24 (please ignore or chuckle quietly to yourself about the silly smile on yours truly, I think I was a little giddy about the adventure at hand   It highlights how little we really carried for 9 weeks across Europe.

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