My Tech Travel Grid

One of the best speaker gifts I got from was from WordCamp Grand Rapids. It’s this nifty zip up pouch for wires and small chargers. It’s super useful, compact, and great for organizing all the things I bring with me when I travel. In this post, I’m going to outline everything I carry with me. Let’s get started!

I do my fair share of travel and like to switch backpacks depending on where I’m going/what kind of space I need. My eBags Slim Professional usually gets the job done (and I LOVE it AND it’s on sale for like 60% off at the time of this writing). But one of my favorite hosting companies, SiteGround, gave me a fantastic and spacious backpack I use for events. Because I switch bags, this pouch provides a convenient way for me to move all my cables without moving them individually.

Top Left: Important Wires

When I travel, I have several charging cables I keep with me. I’ve been working pretty hard to have all USB-C stuff, and it’s reflected here. From top to bottom:

1. USB-C to USB-C Cable (along with Anker’s USB-C wall charger in both 30W for Phones, and 60W for my Mac).
2. iPhone USB to Lightning cable.
3. Another USB-C to USB-C Cable
4. Red Anker USB-A to USB-C cable

This missing link is a USB-C to Lightning Cable, which I intend to pick up next time I wander into an Apple Store. They are currently the only officially licensed one available.

Bottom Left: Extras

The bottom left side of the pouch has a large zipper area, and I’m keeping 2 things in there currently:

1. The portable charger WordCamp Grand Rapids kicked in as part of the gift
2. This preposterously inexpensive and tiny 250GB portable SSD hard drive from Samsung.

There’s probably an opportunity for me to optimize but this and the top right area of the pouch. For example, something I haven’t fit into the pouch yet is my Anker wall chargers. I think I have the room, but I’ll have to play around a bit.

Top Right: Misc Adaptors

Here’s another zip up area with card slots on the front. I’m currently not using those. What is in there is a hodgepodge of things:

1. Aukey USB-A to USB-C converter (which I probably don’t need anymore).
2. A SanDisk 16GB Cruzer Flash Drive (what)
3. My new Lightning Square Card Reader
4. USB-C to VGA Adaptor

Bottom Right: Important Adaptors

Rounding out this list of all the wires and adaptors one could own is:

1. A USB charging stick from WordCamp Minneapolis
2. USB-C to Thunderbolt 2 Adaptor
3. Anker 5-in-1 USB-C hub. This include an HDMI input, 3 USB-A slots, and an Ethernet Cable port.

Wrapping Up (get it!)

Believe it or not, I have all of these because I’ve needed them at some point. Speaking at venues that don’t supply their own adaptors and having a Macbook Pro with 2 USB-C slots on it and that’s it and make things challenging – especially when I want to use my pointer.

There are a couple of things I can probably do to optimize this setup. There’s likely a holy grail of hubs, but I like how compact mine is. So I’ll sacrifice not being plugged in for an hour if I happen to need to use 2 adaptors.

I also recognize how crazy it is to need so many, but I’m all in on USB-C. Let’s hope it doesn’t change for a few years.

What kind of stuff do you travel with? Any recommendations? Let me know!