Being a Nomad (aka my bag of kit = my mobile office)

This is a picture of my bag I carry with me every day I go to work.

I’ve worked in open plan since about 2005, and until 2017 that was ‘open plan’ but fixed desk location i.e. people pretty much had their own desk to fill with family portraits, desk ‘trinkets’, empty food wrappers, dirty coffee cups etc. ‘Clean desks’ were encouraged to enable desk sharing but it rarely happened.

In 2017 working at NHS Digital it was both open plan and (mostly) true hotdesking. In theory we could have colleagues visiting from other locations such as Leeds or Exeter at any time but inevitably teams made up of mostly London or Leeds people tended to hang together and settle into desk locations — but a few of us were truly nomadic.

For me this was brought on by a moderate train commute which I used as work time and also working at home for part of the week. Fast forward to 2021 and at Kettering General Hospital there is minimal open plan (there may be rooms with up to 12 desks in) and zero hotdesking.

I’m now working on making a couple of areas open plan, with an element of hotdesking (I might write about that journey later) but this is about being a nomadic or ‘backpack digital worker’. It was prompted by a chat with Andrew Chilton — our Medical Director — who has just moved from this role to focus on our new hospital build.

In a hospital (and I’m sure many other organisations) the Great Offices often came with great offices. In the City that might mean a corner glazed office, in KGH it means your own office, with space for a meeting table. As he shifts role Andrew described himself as becoming a Nomad, with no fixed office location, so I thought I’d use this as a prompt to talk about the human side of hotdesking — how you manage your kit such that you can work from anywhere — and what I have found to be essential to make such a thing easy.

The bag

This is really important. For a long time I used a NY Messenger bag but actually it’s all about comfort and compartments — which for me now means a backpack.

A backpack (must use both straps) is the most comfortable, it keeps both hands free, you can walk with it, run with it, cycle with it, and fight any muggers off. You also need specific compartments (not one big one) so you can be very specific about where stuff is.

I wouldn’t go larger than 20 litres and the Victorinix Altmont Professional Compact Laptop Backpack I currently use is 16 litres — which is a bit tight but gets everything in. What I like about it

• There are 3 main compartments with additional zipper sections within it and two slim pockets on the font.
• There’s a padded slot for a laptop which means it’s really easy to slide out
• There’s a slot for an iPad Air
• There’s a slot for headphones

What’s in the bag

Going from top left on the picture above…

1. Jabra 510 Bluetooth speaker/microphone — brilliant for if you don’t want headphones on (and are in a closed space) and more importantly to pick up a few people clustered around a table
2. Laptop — in my case a Dell XPS 13 touch screen — I find the tablet from factor and touch screen really helpful — and wouldn’t ever go bigger than a 13” screen now
3. Second screen — most people will dock to a desk screen — but for a while I was truly hotdesking and when I needed a second screen this was great. It’s a ViewSonic TD1655 and what’s fantastic about is it’s touchscreen, it can take power from your laptop via USB-C cable and it’s equally good horizontal or portrait. And yes it fits in the backpack…
4. Jabra Evolve 40 wired headset — comes with a mute control button and is primarily a USB connection but can separate to allow a 3.5mm phono jack — great for when I have to connect to my phone (which is why I’m staying with the Pixel 3A)
5. A ‘Monitor’ connector — for me USB-C to VGA, HDMI, USB-C
6. Mu Duo folding plug — super slimline and takes 2 USB cables
7. MiFi device — for Wi-Fi on the go (assuming you have a good 4G signal from the Sim inside)
8. Work phone — iPhone SE — for phone (doh), MFA, VPN and full Office suite — including Teams
9. Bluetooth headset — hate looking like a salesman but in this Teams era it connects to 2 devices at once and allows me to walk and Teams!
10. iPad Air (backup to the laptop) but mainly used for sketching — and joining Teams meetings as a second persona to share sketches
11. Compact folding laptop stand (Nexstand)
12. Laptop power lead (with shorter cables — cables are heavy!)
13. A pouch for the stuff around it, including a 1 to 3 charging cable (USB-C, iOS, micro USB) and some ‘in ear’ Bowers & Wilkins wired headphones for when the battery has died on everything, and for when I want the music to be loud
14. Drawing tablet — this is a £40 XP-Pen — largely as Wacom were all sold out in the early days of Covid but this is just as good, and much lighter, and cheaper
15. Water bottle — 500ML is too big to carry so this is a 280ML variant
16. Pouch of post its, stickers and ruler
17. The bag!
18. Spare spectacles
19. Hand sanitiser
20. Coffee
21. Fruit and nut
22. Rainbow gloves (thanks Alice!)
23. Cable ties (if you’re cycling, and stuff breaks…
24. Tissues
25. Polos!
26. Medical kit (ibuprofen and paracetamol, diarrhoea tablets (you don’ want to be far from hope and not have that possibility covered), medical wrap, plasters, emergency dental repair kit (really….))
27. Stationary cupboard (sharpies, spare pen, highlighters etc)
28. Door opener 3d printed by Steve Krikler!
29. (the bag again)
30. Field notes book — the only bit of paper I carry
31. Mini stapler (I rarely print nowadays, but when I do I want to staple!)
32. Small bungee cord
33. Rubber glove (back to if the bike breaks down)
34. Sporkie! (for eating…)
35. Masks — it’s 2021….

The software — everything cloud base

• For work we use Office 365 — which is fantastic to store everything in OneDrive but also to use the full Office suite on mobiles/iPads etc
• Personally I use Google drive and docs/slides etc — but also have a significant Dropbox store
• And of course use Slack, Trello as needs demands
• I have zero connection to any network shares, and when I rarely print on site then it’s ‘follow me’ printing

And for winter

• A Rains rain mac (packable down to A4)
• Gloves and Beanie hat (for when the train is late or the car breaks down)
• A Mars bar and some nuts (as above)

And that’s it — my Nomad backpack! Not only does it mean wherever I lay my bag is my office, but it’s also great for business continuity reasons — even if I don’t have mains power I have half a day’s battery power in my laptop/phones where I can stay productive

And yes, I know how lucky and privileged I am in being able to work in this way and am provided with, or am able to buy this kit 😉