For the last four weeks I’ve been working overseas. Balancing workloads and international travel isn’t easy (plus two kids under the age of three) but I’m doing my best to stay on top of all our projects. Here’s a few tips I’ll share from the experience so far.

Get used to McDonalds

Need internet access on the go? Maccas just became your favourite place to eat. Plenty of cafes offer wifi but few seem to offer the reliably fast speeds and ease of connection that McDonalds do. My ‘recent networks’ box is now littered with airports and other various connections but I’ll take the golden arches over them all.

Get the right gear

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Before leaving I geared up with a new computer, hard drives, peripherals and a back pack to store them all in. I couldn’t be more impressed with the Booq laptop backpack I chose and it holds everything really well, is weather proof and comfortable for carrying around 8kg in gear.

Pack light!

With all the above said, pack as light as possible! I’ve watched people pull huge, thick PC laptops from enormous shoulder bags. I love my MacBook Air to death. It’s thin and plenty powerful enough for some pretty intense design work (and it runs StarCraft II if you’re not fussy about the graphics). For extra storage I’m packing a Lacie Rugged hard drive and it hasn’t missed a beat.

Preflight testing

The last thing I’m glad I did was test all of this for a full week before leaving. To avoid any nasty surprises I used all our travelling equipment to give it some real world testing. Any files or programs I had forgotten could be loaded up while they were still on hand. There’s not a single thing I can say I’m missing from my setup back home.

One point of frustration

Hotel Wifi just won’t cut it for regular uploading and editing of files via FTP on servers at some distance around the world (and Maccas won’t let you do 8 hour days at their booths) so you’re going to need access to some serious internet pipes at some point. So realise your biggest limitation will be the quality of your internet connection, plan ahead by looking for good quality internet cafe’s.

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